Online broker Webull considers $400 million US IPO financial-planning.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from financial-planning.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
This Week in Apps: Sneak peek at TikTok shopping, new iOS and Android betas, kids’ app Prodigy hit with FTC complaint
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.
Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.
Robinhood rival Webull raises new funds at US$1B valuation
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Webull, the Chinese-owned brokerage that runs one of the fastest-growing retail trading platforms in the U.S., raised US$150 million in a new financing round that gives the startup more firepower to compete with Robinhood Markets.
The fundraising valued Webullâs parent company at more than US$1 billion, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. A Webull spokesperson declined to comment.
The brokerage, founded by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. alum Wang Anquan, has benefited from the surge in trading by individual investors as stock prices soar to all-time highs. Webull has positioned itself as the go-to platform for disgruntled users of Robinhood, whose restrictions last month on highly volatile stocks including GameStop Corp. sparked outrage from some customers and drew criticism from politicians.
Robinhood rival Webull grows to $1B valuation | Financial Planning financial-planning.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from financial-planning.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.