Robinhood Experiences Outages on SpaceX IPO Day
The trading platform faced technical issues as record-breaking traffic hit during the first day of public trading for SpaceX shares.
Service Interruptions
Robinhood may not have been fully prepared for SpaceX IPO Day. Shortly after shares of Elon Musk's company began trading publicly, users started reporting issues with the brokerage service, according to The Wall Street Journal. Reports of disruptions spiked Friday morning on downdetector.com, peaking at more than 5,500 reports. There were also numerous reports of Robinhood crashing on Reddit and X. In a post on r/raceto10million, numerous users said they were unable to access Robinhood at all, though some said they were able to place orders for SPCX before the app crashed.
Company Response
Robinhood confirmed the issues, which it described as "intermittent," in a post on X. "Robinhood saw record-breaking traffic today," the company said. "As a result, some customers experienced latency and intermittent issues. Essential systems have recovered and our teams are closely monitoring." The replies suggest technical problems are ongoing for some users. Robinhood didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Historical Context
This is not the first time the brokerage has struggled during a high-profile moment. The company faced numerous technical issues during the 2021 meme stock craze fueled by retail traders on Robinhood. A congressional report later revealed that executives and employees struggled to keep up with the sudden influx of new users and massive spike in trading volume.
