The eToro logo is seen during the 2021 Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.
Pedro Fiúza | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Stock brokerage platform eToro is getting interest from bankers and investors about a public market listing after its scrapped plans to go public via merger with a blank-check company, CEO Yoni Assia told CNBC.
“We definitely are eyeing the public markets,” Assia told CNBC in an exclusive interview last week. “I definitely see us becoming eventually a public company.”
“When is the ideal time to do that? We’re always evaluating the right opportunity at the right time and the right market,” he added.
Assia said that his brokerage company has built good relationships with exchanges, including the Nasdaq stock exchange.
EToro has already put the work in toward becoming a public company, he suggested, and the question of listing is more a matter of when, not if.
“It’s our business, right? Retail investors come to eToro to buy shares of a public company. So we’re happy to engage and build those relationships over time as we scale more.”
Figures shared by eToro with CNBC exclusively show that the firm recorded $630 million in revenue in 2023, more or less matching the $631 million in revenue it attracted in 2022.
But the company reported more than $100 million in EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization), an impressive margin for a retail brokerage business.
The company did not provide a comparable profit figure for 2022.
EToro relies mainly on fees related to trading, like spreads on buy and sell orders, as well as fees for non-trading activities like money withdrawals and currency conversion.
EToro now has 35.5 million registered users, and over 3 million funded accounts. The company crossed $10 billion in total customer assets under administration in 2023, according to its financials.
Assia also disclosed that eToro has purchased a company called Deep, which focuses on content automation.
This is an area the company plans to focus on heavily in 2024.
Assia said eToro has been using AI heavily in its business, particularly in content and marketing. Around 80% of all of eToro’s marketing context, graphics, content, and localization integrates AI, he added.
AI is also serving a use case in investing and trading, according to Assia, with the company focusing heavily on integrating this into the product experience.
AI-related stocks, meanwhile, have generated a great deal of buzz among eToro’s userbase.
“If we think about AI, and what is the holy grail of AI for our customers, it’s obviously generating alpha in the markets,” Assia told CNBC.
AI has become a buzzy area for investors following the explosion of interest surrounding ChatGPT, the AI chatbot developed by Microsoft-backed company OpenAI.
Learnings from the SPAC process
EToro, which lets users buy and sell stocks via an online platform, was originally meant to go public through a combination with the special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, FinTech Acquisition Corp — which belonged to Bancorp founder Betsy Cohen.
A SPAC is effectively a listed shell company that’s set up with the aim of taking another target company public. The trend was immensely popular during a boom in such listings in 2020 and 2021 that saw companies from Virgin Orbit to Cazoo go public in much-hyped deals. The hype has since faded.
But eToro shelved these plans, which would have given the company a valuation of $8.8 billion.
Assia, who claims to have begun his trading journey from an early age, said eToro has learned a lot from the experience, which saw FinTech Acquisition Corp plummet and eventually dissolve and liquidate.
“We’ve learned a lot from the experience, looking at public markets in the U.S. and seeing sort of the bubble burst,” Assia told CNBC.
“We said 2022 is the year of education for customers to understand that the markets don’t always go up,” Assia said. “And I think 2023 is probably an educational year around the globe.”
“When everybody’s pessimistic is when markets actually do go up.”
Since its shelved listing plans, eToro in March 2023 raised $250 million at a $3.5 billion valuation in a deal backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, ION Investment Group, and Velvet Sea Ventures.
Financial technology companies have had a tough time over the last couple of years following a spike in interest rates, which have clobbered some risk assets. More recently, companies have seen a better time in the public markets, with shares of Affirm and Coinbase up 172% and 165%, respectively.
That hasn’t yet translated into private markets which, on the whole, remain depressed from levels reached during the height of the 2020 and 2021 fintech boom.
Assia noted that retail investors aren’t quite yet back in full in the stock market, and are still facing challenges given the higher cost of living.
However, he expects things to improve in 2024 with the expectation that interest rates will be lowered by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Assia said eToro was focused heavily on product in 2023, prioritizing things like a better advanced trading experience and technical analysis features for its more hardcore user base.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Nov. 21, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Last week on Wall Street, two forces dragged stocks lower: a set of high-stakes numbers from Nvidia and the U.S. jobs report that landed with more heat than expected. But the leaves that remained after hot tea scalded investors seemed to augur good tidings.
Even though Nvidia’s third-quarter results easily breezed past Wall Street’s estimates, they couldn’t quell worries about lofty valuations and an unsustainable bubble inflating in the artificial intelligence sector. The “Magnificent Seven” cohort — save Alphabet — had a losing week.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics added to the pressure. September payrolls rose far more than economists expected, prompting investors to pare back their bets of a December interest rate cut. The timing didn’t help matters, as the report had been delayed and hit just as markets were already on edge.
On Friday, New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said that he sees “room” for the central bank to lower interest rates, describing current policy as “modestly restrictive.” His comments caused traders to increase their bets on a December cut to around 70%, up from 44.4% a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
And despite a broad sell-off in AI stocks last week, Alphabet shares bucked the trend. Investors seemed impressed by its new AI model, Gemini 3, and hopeful that its development of custom chips could rival Nvidia’s in the long run.
Meanwhile, Eli Lilly’s ascent into the $1 trillion valuation club served as a reminder that market leadership doesn’t belong to tech alone. In a market defined by narrow concentration, any sign of broadening strength is a welcome change.
Diversification, even within AI’s sprawling ecosystem, might be exactly what this market needs now.
Qube Holdings receives takeover proposal from Macquarie. The asset management firm has put forth a non-binding proposal to acquire Qube Holdings, an Australian logistics company, at an enterprise value of 11.6 billion Australian dollars ($7.49 billion).
Bessent doesn’t see a U.S. recession in 2026. “We have set the table for a very strong, noninflationary growth economy,” the U.S. Treasury secretary said Sunday in an interview on “Meet the Press.” However, he acknowledged that some sectors have been struggling.
Singapore inflation creeps up. The country’s consumer price index for October rose 1.2% year on year, the highest since August 2024 and surpassing the 0.9% estimate in a Reuters poll of economists. Core inflation also increased a higher-than-expected 1.2%.
[PRO] Opportunities in China’s tech sector. Despite a trade truce between the U.S. and China, ongoing tensions mean both will focus on homegrown technology, analysts say. Here are the Chinese tech firms that Wall Street banks are keeping an eye on.
And finally…
A picture taken on December 8, 2014 in Abidjan shows a Chinese shoe dealer in a transaction at Adjamene’s market.
Chinese business dealings in Africa, once dominated by state-owned enterprises, are now increasingly shifting toward consumer products from the private sector.
Chinese investments in Africa’s resource-intensive sectors have declined by roughly 40% since their 2015 peak, according to Rhodium Group China Cross-Border Monitor released on Nov. 18 this year. Meanwhile, China’s exports to Africa have surged by 28% year on year over the first three quarters of 2025, the report said.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Nov. 21, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Last week on Wall Street, two forces dragged stocks lower: a set of high-stakes numbers from Nvidia and the U.S. jobs report that landed with more heat than expected. But the leaves that remained after hot tea scalded investors seemed to augur good tidings.
Even though Nvidia’s third-quarter results easily breezed past Wall Street’s estimates, they couldn’t quell worries about lofty valuations and an unsustainable bubble inflating in the artificial intelligence sector. The “Magnificent Seven” cohort — save Alphabet — had a losing week.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics added to the pressure. September payrolls rose far more than economists expected, prompting investors to pare back their bets of a December interest rate cut. The timing didn’t help matters, as the report had been delayed and hit just as markets were already on edge.
On Friday, New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said that he sees “room” for the central bank to lower interest rates, describing current policy as “modestly restrictive.” His comments caused traders to increase their bets on a December cut to around 70%, up from 44.4% a week ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
And despite a broad sell-off in AI stocks last week, Alphabet shares bucked the trend. Investors seemed impressed by its new AI model, Gemini 3, and hopeful that its development of custom chips could rival Nvidia’s in the long run.
Meanwhile, Eli Lilly’s ascent into the $1 trillion valuation club served as a reminder that market leadership doesn’t belong to tech alone. In a market defined by narrow concentration, any sign of broadening strength is a welcome change.
Diversification, even within AI’s sprawling ecosystem, might be exactly what this market needs now.
What you need to know today
And finally…
The Beijing music venue DDC was one of the latest to have to cancel a performance by a Japanese artist on Nov. 20, 2025, in the wake of escalating bilateral tensions.
China’s escalating dispute with Japan reinforces Beijing’s growing economic influence — and penchant for abrupt actions that can create uncertainty for businesses.
Hours before Japanese jazz quintet The Blend was due to perform in Beijing on Thursday, a plainclothesman walked into the DDC music club during a sound check. Then, “the owner of the live house came to me and said: ‘The police has told me tonight is canceled,'” said Christian Petersen-Clausen, a music agent.
— Evelyn Cheng
Correction: This report has been updated to correct the spelling of Eli Lilly.
Meta halted internal research that purportedly showed that people who stopped using Facebook became less depressed and anxious, according to a legal filing that was released on Friday.
The social media giant was alleged to have initiated the study, dubbed Project Mercury, in late 2019 as a way to help it “explore the impact that our apps have on polarization, news consumption, well-being, and daily social interactions,” according to the legal brief, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
The filing contains newly unredacted information pertaining to Meta.
The newly released legal brief is related to high-profile multidistrict litigation from a variety of plaintiffs, such as school districts, parents and state attorneys general against social media companies like Meta, Google’s YouTube, Snap and TikTok.
The plaintiffs claim that these businesses were aware that their respective platforms caused various mental health-related harms to children and young adults, but failed to take action and instead misled educators and authorities, among several allegations.
“We strongly disagree with these allegations, which rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens—like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with controls to manage their teens’ experiences.”
A Google spokesperson said in a statement that “These lawsuits fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works and the allegations are simply not true.”
“YouTube is a streaming service where people come to watch everything from live sports to podcasts to their favorite creators, primarily on TV screens, not a social network where people go to catch up with friends,” the Google spokesperson said. “We’ve also developed dedicated tools for young people, guided by child safety experts, that give families control.”
Snap and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 2019 Meta research was based on a random sample of consumers who stopped their Facebook and Instagram usage for a month, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit alleged that Meta was disappointed that the initial tests of the study showed that people who stopped using Facebook “for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison.”
Meta allegedly chose not to “sound the alarm,” but instead stopped the research, the lawsuit said.
“The company never publicly disclosed the results of its deactivation study,” according to the suit. “Instead, Meta lied to Congress about what it knew.”
The lawsuit cites an unnamed Meta employee who allegedly said, “If the results are bad and we don’t publish and they leak, is it going to look like tobacco companies doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves?”
Stone, in a series of social media posts, pushed back on the lawsuit’s implication that Meta shuttered the internal research after it allegedly showed a causal relationship between its apps and adverse mental-health effects.
Stone characterized the 2019 study as flawed and said it was the reason that the company expressed disappointment. The study, Stone said, merely found that “people who believed using Facebook was bad for them felt better when they stopped using it.”
“This is a confirmation of other public research (“deactivation studies”) out there that demonstrates the same effect,” Stone said in a separate post. “It makes intuitive sense but it doesn’t show anything about the actual effect of using the platform.”
