Robinhood rival eToro agrees $120 million share sale at discounted valuation
The eToro logo is seen during the 2021 Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.
Pedro Fiúza | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Stock trading platform eToro agreed to a $120 million secondary share sale, giving the company a slightly lower valuation than the $3.5 billion it was valued at in a primary funding round earlier this year.
The Israeli digital brokerage, which offers users trading in stocks, crypto, and contracts for difference, gave early employees and angel investors a chance to sell shares to some of eToro’s existing investors, according to a memo to employees obtained by CNBC.
The round is a secondary share sale, meaning the company hasn’t issued any new shares and won’t net any income from the transaction. However, it’s an indicator of the price investors are currently willing to pay to own shares of the firm.
It comes after eToro last year scrapped its plans to go public in a merger with a blank-check company, Fintech V.
The deal would have valued the company at $10 billion, but a downturn in equity and crypto prices threw a spanner in the works, as investors reassessed their exposure to tech and retail brokerages suffered a slump in trading activity.
“As a business which continues to demonstrate sustainable, profitable growth we are considered an attractive investment opportunity by many investors,” Yoni Assia, eToro’s CEO and co-founder, said in the Monday memo to employees.
“This secondary transaction will give existing shareholders in eToro and veteran employees who have vested options the opportunity to sell a proportion of their shares to these purchasers.”
“This is not a primary i.e. eToro is not raising money — rather it is a moment for some long standing shareholders and employees to take some liquidity. As always, please maintain confidentiality and do not share any details of this potential transaction with anyone. Employees with eligible options will receive an email with further details.”
EToro most recently raised $250 million from investors at a $3.5 billion valuation, far lower than the $10 billion it was seeking in its bid to float via SPAC.
Investors in that round included SoftBank Vision Fund 2, ION Investment Group and Velvet Sea Ventures. The investment came in the form of an advance investment agreement, which is where investors pay in advance for shares that will be allocated at a later date, sometimes at a discount.
EToro agreed it would convert the investment to equity on the condition that the SPAC deal doesn’t go ahead — which it didn’t.
Earlier this year, eToro signed a partnership with Twitter, now known as X, allowing users of the social media platform to access stock and crypto trading by searching for so-called “cashtags,” which are searchable by adding a dollar sign before the ticker symbol of a stock or other asset.
EToro said it is looking to expand its partnership with Twitter, or X, in a number of ways. The company’s CEO recently met with X CEO Linda Yaccarino in New York to discuss working on expanding their partnership.
EToro, like many online wealth management platforms, benefited from the surge of demand during the Covid-19 pandemic when people were stuck indoors and had more time — and in some cases money — to splash a bit of their excess cash on stocks and other assets.
GameStop, and several other so-called “meme” stocks, skyrocketed in response to heightened retail investor demand which put pressure on short-selling funds.
More recently, online brokerage platforms have had a tougher time. The rising cost of living has made it tougher for consumers to part with the cash they were flush with during the days of Covid. Freetrade, the U.K. brokerage startup, slashed its valuation by a whopping 65% in a crowdfunding round, citing a “different market environment.”
Read the full memo eToro CEO Yoni Assia sent out to staff below:
Dear eTorians,
As August approaches I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the many achievements of H1 and share an outlook for H2.
As outlined in July’s AHM, we had strong business performance in the first half of the year resulting in EBITDA (profits) of over $50 million. Funded accounts now stand at almost 3 million and our assets under administration (AuA) are $7.8 billion. This positive start to the year was driven by the rally in equity markets (in June we saw the highest volume of equities trading since 2021) plus a recovery in crypto markets. We have also maintained our focus on costs to ensure sustainable, profitable growth.
2023 to date has been very busy in terms of product development, launches and partnerships with highlights including: the significant upgrade to our charts via a partnership with TradingView (more coming soon), an ISA with MoneyFarm, major milestones in terms of UX optimization including the new AI assistant, the launch of the amazing new eToro Academy, the launch of extended hours trading, expanding our football sponsorships to include women, adding more assets and so much more.
I also want to update that we were recently approached by several existing investors who have shown an interest in buying more shares in eToro. As a business which continues to demonstrate sustainable, profitable growth we are considered an attractive investment opportunity by many investors. [Please note this is not financial advice!] This secondary transaction will give existing shareholders in eToro and veteran employees who have vested options the opportunity to sell a proportion of their shares to these purchasers. This is not a primary i.e. eToro is not raising money – rather it is a moment for some long standing shareholders and employees to take some liquidity. As always, please maintain confidentiality and do not share any details of this potential transaction with anyone. Employees with eligible options will receive an email with further details.
For those of you taking a well-earned break in August, enjoy your vacation and I hope you come back refreshed and energized for an exciting second half of the year.
Best,
Yoni
Charges against Jeffrey Epstein were announced on July 8, 2019 in New York City. Epstein will be charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors.
Stephanie Keith | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon are among those who appeared in partially redacted files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that were released on Friday by Democrats in the House Oversight Committee.
The committee earlier embarked on a probe to evaluate whether the federal government mishandled its case against Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence following a 2022 conviction for recruiting teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.
President Donald Trump had promised voters on the campaign trail that he would release government documents related to Epstein, who was arrested in the summer of 2019 on sex trafficking charges and died in a New York federal prison, reportedly by suicide, before trial.
However, Trump has refused to endorse the release of any Epstein files since returning to the White House in January, and Republicans in Congress have followed his lead, keeping the documents out of the public’s view.
Democrats in the committee on Friday released redacted pages from a new batch of files they obtained through their probe without giving their Republican peers advanced notice. They were rebuked for the move.
In a statement on Friday, the committee said that the batch included 8,544 documents in response to a subpoena in August, and that, “Further review of the documents, which were redacted to protect the identity of victims, is ongoing.”
The latest batch of documents received by the committee from the Justice Department contained itineraries and notes by Epstein memorializing invitations he’d sent, trips he’d planned and meetings he’d booked with tech and business leaders.
Demonstrators gather for a press conference calling for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files outside the United States Captiol on Wednesday September 03, 2025 in Washington, DC.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
One of the itineraries indicated that Epstein expected Musk to make a trip to his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands on Dec. 6, 2014, but then asked “is this still happening?”
Musk told Vanity Fair in 2019 that he had visited Epstein’s New York City mansion and that Epstein “tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island,” but the Tesla CEO had declined.
In June, Musk wrote in a post on X, that he thought Trump and his administration were withholding Epstein-related files from the public view in order to protect the president’s reputation.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,” Musk, who was in the midst of a public spat with the president, wrote at the time. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
Trump was mentioned in previously released court documents from the Epstein case, but has not been formally accused of wrongdoing.
Musk started the year leading the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort to slash the size of the federal government and reduce the power of various regulatory agencies. He left DOGE in May, and he and the president proceeded to hurl insults at each other in public over a number of disagreements.
However, Trump and Musk remain close enough that they sat together at a memorial service for Charlie Kirk earlier this month after the right-wing activist was assassinated while speaking at a university in Utah.
The partially redacted files also indicated Epstein had breakfast with Bannon on Feb. 16, 2019, and lunch with investor Peter Thiel on Nov. 27, 2017. Bannon is a long-time Trump ally, and Thiel was a major backer of Trump ahead of the 2016 election who spoke at the Republican National Convention.
The files also mentioned that Epstein booked a “tentative breakfast party” with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, historically a supporter of Democrats, in December 2014.
Musk, Thiel, Bannon and Gates weren’t immediately available for comment.
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