Robinhood In 2013, Bhatt co-founded the zero-commission stock trading platform
Robinhood with Vlad Tenev. In 2015, Robinhood launched a mobile app, of which Bhatt focused on the product and design elements. Bhatt emphasized the importance of user research and he and team members would approach students on Stanford's campus, asking for feedback on new features, eventually leading to an
Apple Design award in that same year. Following a funding round in May 2018 which increased Robinhood's valuation to $6 billion, Bhatt and Tenev became billionaires. He stepped down as co-CEO in November 2020 and assumed the role of chief creative officer.
Aetherflux In October 2024, Bhatt announced the launch of a space-based solar energy startup based in
San Carlos called Aetherflux, of which he is the founder and chief executive. The company intends to create a
satellite constellation to collect solar energy in space and beam it back to Earth using infrared lasers, distributing energy to remote regions of the world where delivering power is expensive, difficult, or dangerous. Space-based solar power can be traced back to science fiction writer
Isaac Asimov’s 1941 short story,
Reason, while the name of the company was inspired by the idea of
aether theories. Bhatt is an investor in several private space companies, including
Reflect Orbital, a company with the goal of building
mirrors in space to reflect sunlight toward solar farms on Earth during the night, and Apex, a producer of
satellite buses, among others. ==Awards and recognition==