Public
The $1.2 Billion Pre-IPO Deep Dive — an "agentic brokerage" with no disclosed revenue, a five-year-old price tag, a reversed no-PFOF pledge, and nothing on EDGAR but Form Ds.
Public is the most product-ambitious mid-tier US retail brokerage — stocks, options, fractional corporate bonds, Treasuries, crypto IRAs, alternatives and, since March 2026, AI agents that trade on a member's behalf. It is also the most opaque: the last disclosed valuation is the $1.2B Series D of February 2021, the December 2024 $135M Series D-2 carried no price, revenue has never been reported, and the only audited numbers are a broker-dealer subsidiary with $9.1M of equity. The "no PFOF" brand that defined the 2021 story has been reversed in the fine print, FINRA has fined the firm twice, and the UK expansion lasted eight months. There is no reported IPO process. This is a watch-the-comps name, not a watch-the-filing name — and the comps say a listing would be benchmarked against Webull, not Robinhood.
The Numbers at a Glance
1 · Business Overview
From investing social network to agentic brokerage in five years
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2017 (as TapX Trading & Analytics) · app launched 2019 · New York |
| Co-CEOs | Leif Abraham · Jannick Malling (co-founders) |
| CFO | Sruthi Lanka (ex-VP Finance, MoneyLion — listed via SPAC 2021) |
| COO / Broker-Dealer CEO | Stephen Sikes |
| Broker-Dealer | Open to the Public Investing, Inc. · FINRA CRD 127818 · clears through Apex |
| Employees | ~150 (2023, last stated) · 31 registered representatives at the BD (FINRA, 2025) |
| Disclosed Equity Raised | ~$415M across five rounds + $30M debt (Dec 2024) |
| Last Disclosed Valuation | $1.2B · February 2021 Series D ($220M) |
| Latest Round | $135M Series D-2 · December 2, 2024 · Accel lead · valuation undisclosed |
| Members | 3M+ (November 2022) · median customer age 38 |
| Assets | "Billions" (company) · RIA arm reports only $25M (Form ADV, 2025) |
| Revenue / Profitability | Undisclosed · "core brokerage business is profitable" (Dec 2024) |
Public launched in 2019 as an investing social network — follow other investors, see their portfolios, learn in public — and rode the 2021 retail wave to a $1.2B Series D three weeks after the GameStop squeeze, famously dropping payment for order flow in favor of tipping the same month. Since then the company has re-positioned twice: in 2025 to a "platform for long-term, affluent investors" (the social feed was sunset in June 2025), and in 2026 to the "world's first Agentic Brokerage," with AI agents that monitor, rebalance and execute on a member's instructions.
2 · Product Suite & Moat
More asset classes than Robinhood — and a thinner moat
| Product | Description | Monetization |
|---|---|---|
| Stocks & ETFs | 9,000+ listed, fractional; extended hours | PFOF (default wholesale route); $0.003/sh on lit routes; FPSL lending share |
| Options | Stock, ETF and index options (launched Jan 2024) | PFOF with $0.06–$0.18/contract customer rebate; $0.50 index contracts |
| Bonds & Treasuries | First retail fractional corporate-bond platform (Dec 2023); T-bill ladders via Jiko; Bond Account | $0.10–$0.50 per $100 mark-up; 0.09–0.29% Treasury Account fee; $3.99/mo Bond Account |
| Crypto & Crypto IRA | 60+ tokens via zerohash; Alto CryptoIRA book acquired Nov 2025 (~$600M AUM, ~$65M) | 1.25% spread; 0.05%/month IRA custody |
| High-Yield Cash | Sweep; 5.0% APY (Feb 2024) → 3.30% (Aug 2026) | Net interest spread (undisclosed) |
| AI: Alpha, Generated Assets, Agents | Alpha research (2023); prompt-to-index (May 2025); Direct Indexing (Oct 2025); AI Agents (Mar 2026); MCP + trading API | 0.49% / 0.19% advisory fees; engagement |
| Premium & Concierge | $10/mo or $96/yr (waived over $50K); Concierge over $500K | Subscription |
| Alternatives (Otis) | Fractional art, collectibles, music royalties (Oct 2023) | Spread / fees · niche |
The moat question is where the thesis gets hard. Public's strengths are real but replicable:
- Multi-asset breadth is a feature, not a moat — Robinhood now offers options, crypto, retirement, Strategies and Gold banking; Webull and eToro cover most of the same ground. Fractional corporate bonds were a genuine first, but Moment Technologies, the matching engine behind them, is a vendor.
- The agent layer is early and contested — eToro launched its own AI portfolio agent in March 2026, and the compliance perimeter is unsettled: Public's own disclosure says agent outputs "should not be considered investment recommendations or advice."
- An older, wealthier cohort (median age 38, ~six years above Robinhood's) is the most defensible asset — it is why the company pivoted from social to "affluent" — but it is a positioning, not a network effect.
- Growth has been bought in books — Stocktwits TradeApp accounts (2024), Carta's secondaries accounts (2024), Tornado's 85,000+ accounts (2025), Alto's crypto IRAs (2025), Treasury App's 40,000 users (2026). Efficient, but it tells you organic acquisition is expensive.
3 · Financials & What EDGAR Actually Shows
No revenue, no AUM, no funded-account count — but an audited subsidiary
Public discloses adjectives, not numbers: "scaled AUM into the billions," "attracts billions in deposits annually," "gross profit per user grows every quarter," "core brokerage business is profitable with over 10 significant revenue streams" (all December 2024). The last hard operating metric was 3M+ members in November 2022; funded accounts were said to have "more than doubled" in 2022 but never quantified.
What EDGAR does show. The broker-dealer, Open to the Public Investing, Inc. (CIK 0001253489), files an annual audited FOCUS report. The public portion of the FY2024 statement of financial condition — the newest whose PDF is machine-readable — reads as follows:
| Line item (Dec 31, 2024) | USD | Read-through |
|---|---|---|
| Total assets | $75.5M | Of which $63.8M is fractional shares held for users (pass-through) |
| Additional paid-in capital | $41.1M | Parent capital pushed down into the BD since inception |
| Accumulated deficit | ($31.9M) | Cumulative BD-level losses; federal NOLs ~$26.8M |
| Stockholder's equity | $9.1M | The regulated entity is small |
| Net capital | $7.8M | vs $250K minimum — comfortably compliant |
| Deferred tax asset valuation allowance | $7.4M | Management does not expect to use the NOLs soon — not a profitability signal |
Two caveats cut both ways. The BD is a subsidiary, not the group: crypto (zerohash), Treasuries (Jiko), cash yield, subscriptions and advisory fees sit in other entities or the parent, so the $31.9M deficit understates neither nor proves group losses. But the full valuation allowance against the NOLs is an auditor-reviewed statement that the regulated business is not expected to be reliably profitable near-term — which sits awkwardly next to "core brokerage business is profitable." An S-1 would reconcile the two. There is none.
4 · IPO Status & Timeline
No filing, no bankers reported, no timeline — and a price that is five years old
We checked EDGAR directly. Public Holdings, Inc. (CIK 0001723653, formerly TapX Trading & Analytics) has exactly four filings, all Form D, the last dated December 16, 2020. There is no S-1, no public DRS — and notably no Form D for the December 2024 round either. No credible outlet has reported banker mandates, a confidential filing, or an IPO timeline in 2025–2026. The only on-record comment is co-CEO Leif Abraham's in May 2023: "too early to determine any exit timeline," with a stated preference for strategic investors who "remain invested through an IPO" and no interest in a sale.
A quiet D-2 is the opposite of a crossover round
The critical nuance: the December 2024 raise was led by the existing lead (Accel, which "has led or co-led every funding round since 2019"), included $30M of debt, and was announced without a valuation — the pattern of an insider-supported extension, not a pre-IPO mark. Forge carries an unverified $983M "Series D-3" valuation from March 2025; if real, that is an ~18% step-down from 2021.
- Secondary quotes in August 2026 — $5.73 (Hiive) and $6.41 (Nasdaq Private Market, −23% over its window) per share — cannot be converted to a valuation because no round price per share is public, but the direction is down.
- Order books are thin: eight live orders on one venue, three asks on another. There is no tender program relieving employee liquidity.
- The CFO's listing experience is a SPAC (MoneyLion, 2021), not a traditional IPO.
- The company's 2026 "IPO pre-access" and Private Company Pages features are products for members — not signals about its own listing.
Base case: no listing before 2028; the next event is a priced round or a strategic sale. Bull case: a 2027 IPO if the agentic pivot produces a disclosable revenue number above Webull's growth rate. Bear case: a recapitalisation or acquisition by a larger brokerage or bank below the 2021 mark.
5 · Competitive Landscape
The listed retail-brokerage set now has three fresh public comps
| Competitor | Ticker | Revenue (FY2025) | Funded Accounts | Client Assets | QL Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | Private | n/d | 3M+ members (2022) | "billions" | — |
| Robinhood | HOOD | $4.5B | 27.0M | $324B | Neutral |
| Webull | BULL | $571M | 5.0M | $24.6B | Sell |
| eToro | ETOR | $787M net contrib. (FY24) | n/d | n/d | Strong Buy |
| Interactive Brokers | IBKR | ~$7.6B (2Q26 ann.) | 5.19M | $930B | Sell |
| Coinbase | COIN | $7.2B | n/d | n/d | Strong Buy |
| SoFi Invest | SOFI | segment n/d | 10.9M members (group) | n/d | Sell |
Signals are the QL engine's read as of August 21, 2026. The competitive picture has changed materially since Public's last priced round: Webull listed via SPAC in April 2025 and eToro IPO'd in May 2025, so a Public listing would now be benchmarked against two mid-cap, recently-public peers with disclosed numbers — not against Robinhood's $86B. Webull is the closest analogue: 5M funded accounts, $571M revenue growing 46%, a $4.6B market cap. Public has never said how many of its 3M+ members are funded.
6 · The PFOF Reversal & the Regulatory Record
The 2021 brand promise versus the 2026 fee schedule
"No PFOF" is gone, and FINRA has been here twice
On February 1, 2021 Public dropped equity payment for order flow and replaced it with optional tipping — the defining move of the brand. Its current Rule 606/607 disclosure routes listed stocks and ETFs to a default "wholesale route" from which "we receive payment for order flow"; the non-PFOF "smart" and "lit exchanges only" routes cost $0.003 per share. Options, launched January 2024, are PFOF-funded, with the company keeping 50–84% and rebating $0.06–$0.18 per contract to the customer. We could not find a primary source dating the equity-PFOF reinstatement; it was never announced the way the 2021 removal was.
The enforcement record of Open to the Public Investing, Inc.:
- December 2023 — FINRA, fully-paid securities lending. One of four firms (with M1, SoFi Securities, SogoTrade) ordered to pay a combined $2.6M including over $1M of restitution for auto-enrolling every new customer in FPSL with no appropriateness criteria and disclosures that misrepresented the "loan fee" customers would receive.
- May 27, 2025 — FINRA AWC, influencer marketing. Censure, $350,000 fine and an undertaking. From January 2020 to September 2022 the firm paid 110 influencers per post or per funded account, uncapped; more than 23,000 accounts were opened through their links; posts were "not fair and balanced," claimed "commission free" without fee disclosure, and were often not labeled as advertisements. Communications were not reviewed or retained until March 2023.
- No SEC enforcement action against the parent, the BD, or Public Advisors was found.
Why it matters for the IPO: neither fine is large. But together with the UK closure (launched July 2023, shut February 2024 — "better to focus on US business for now") and the influencer-driven growth they describe, they define the diligence narrative an S-1 would have to rebut: a company that has changed its model, its market and its monetization three times in five years.
7 · Valuation Framework
Triangulating a number the company will not give you
| Metric | Value | Comp |
|---|---|---|
| Last disclosed valuation | $1.2B | Feb 2021 · Forge unverified mark $983M (Mar 2025) |
| Revenue | Undisclosed | Third-party estimate ~$174M (aggregator, unverified) |
| Market cap / revenue, listed peers | — | HOOD ~19.1× · BULL ~8.1× · COIN ~5.9× · IBKR ~5.4× · ETOR ~2.9× (net contribution) |
| Value per account | ≤ ~$400 / member | IBKR ~$7,900 · HOOD ~$3,190 · BULL ~$920 per funded account |
| Implied revenue at Webull's multiple | ~$150M | $1.2B ÷ 8.1× — the revenue the 2021 mark needs today |
| Profitability | Undisclosed | "Core brokerage profitable" · BD NOLs fully reserved |
Without a revenue number, the honest approach is to ask what the 2021 mark requires. At Webull's ~8.1× the $1.2B valuation needs ~$150M of revenue; at eToro's ~2.9× it needs ~$410M. Public's "10+ revenue streams" on an older, wealthier base make the lower bar plausible — which is why the secondary market has not collapsed the name, only drifted it. Fair-value triangulation under explicit assumptions:
- Bull case ($1.5–2.0B): the agentic pivot and acquired books lift funded accounts to ~2M and revenue to $250M+ growing 40%+; an IPO prices at a Webull-plus-growth 8–10× in 2027.
- Base case ($0.9–1.2B): revenue in the $120–180M range, growth 20–30%; the next priced round lands near the unverified $983M mark, roughly flat-to-down on 2021. Consistent with every observable secondary signal.
- Bear case ($0.5–0.7B): retail-trading cyclicality plus rate cuts compress both transaction and interest revenue; Accel-led extension capital gives way to a strategic sale at eToro-like multiples on sub-$200M revenue.
8 · Key Risks
What public-market diligence will price in
| Risk | Severity | Mitigant |
|---|---|---|
| Disclosure opacity | High | None until an S-1; "profitable core brokerage" is unquantified and the BD's NOLs are fully reserved |
| Stale / declining mark | High | D-2 undisclosed; Forge $983M unverified; secondaries drifting down — the next priced round resets it |
| PFOF & best-execution regulation | Medium | Non-PFOF routes offered at $0.003/sh; options rebate shares economics with customers |
| Rate sensitivity of cash economics | Medium | HYCA yield 5.0% → 3.30%; margin rates indexed to FFTR; NII undisclosed |
| AI-agent suitability liability | Medium | Disclaimers in place; industry pushback on record; eToro competing with the same feature |
| Regulatory record | Medium | Two FINRA AWCs (2023, 2025); WSPs revised; no SEC action found |
| Crypto exposure timing | Medium | $65M Alto CryptoIRA deal and crypto-IRA launch landed into a 2026 crypto drawdown |
| Single-sponsor dependence | Low–Medium | Accel led every round; Tiger, Lakestar, Greycroft on the cap table; no majority holder |
| Key-person / departures | Low | Co-CEO founders intact; regulatory-affairs VP left for CalPERS (2025); co-founder Hendelman to Clear Street (2024) |
9 · Pre-IPO Exposure Routes Today
Thin secondaries — the investable thesis is the listed comp set
| Route | How | Caveats |
|---|---|---|
| Private secondary platforms | Listed on several accredited-investor venues at ~$5.73–$6.41/share indicative | Eight live orders on one venue, three asks on another; no public round price to benchmark; pricing drifting down |
| BULL (closest comp) | Webull — 5M funded accounts, $571M revenue, 46% growth, listed April 2025 | QL engine currently reads Sell; the multiple Public would be priced against |
| ETOR | eToro — multi-asset, social-investing heritage, IPO May 2025 | QL engine reads Strong Buy; crypto-heavy mix · Israel/EU base |
| HOOD (category leader) | Own the category's growth and the agent/AI narrative at scale | No Public-specific exposure · 19× revenue already |
| Patience | Wait for a priced round or a filing | Base case: no listing before 2028 |
Bottom Line
Public has built a genuinely broad product — seven asset classes, an older and wealthier cohort than Robinhood's, and the first live AI agents in a US brokerage — and it has done so with a fraction of its rivals' capital. What it has not done is tell anyone what it earns. The last price is five years old, the last round was unpriced, the secondary market is drifting down, and EDGAR holds nothing but Form Ds. The no-PFOF story that justified the 2021 premium has been quietly reversed, and FINRA has written the diligence memo twice. Webull's listing set the benchmark: ~8× revenue and ~$920 per funded account for a growing, profitable mid-tier brokerage. Public's 2021 mark needs ~$150M of revenue to hold at that multiple — plausible, but unproven. For growth portfolios this is a watch-the-comps name, not a watch-the-filing name: there is no IPO to position for until the company prices a round or discloses a number.