SpaceX IPO causes Robinhood outages for some users

Trading platform Robinhood faced service disruptions on the day of SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO), according to The Wall Street Journal. Shortly after shares of Elon Musk's rocket, AI, and social media company began trading publicly, users started reporting problems with the brokerage service.

According to outage monitoring website downdetector.com, reports spiked on Friday morning, peaking at over 5,500. Numerous reports of Robinhood crashing appeared on Reddit and X. In a Reddit thread on r/raceto10million, many users said they were unable to access Robinhood at all, although some managed to place orders before the app crashed.

Robinhood confirmed the issues, describing them as "intermittent" and citing "record-breaking traffic." The company stated that essential systems had recovered, but replies to the post suggest ongoing problems for some users. Robinhood did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is not the first time the brokerage has struggled during a high-profile moment. In 2021, during the meme stock craze fueled by retail traders, Robinhood faced numerous technical issues, and a congressional report later revealed that executives and employees struggled to keep up with the sudden surge in users and trading volume.