Robinhood, an online brokerage platform that has popularized free stock trades and drawn scrutiny from regulators, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering (IPO), media reports said Tuesday.

Axios and Bloomberg News cited people familiar with the matter, noting that Robinhood had taken advantage of a regulation allowing for the IPO filing without immediate disclosure of its finances.

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Details of the IPO were not immediately known but Bloomberg said the listing would be on the Nasdaq exchange.

Some reports said Robinhood’s market valuation could be as high as $40 billion.

The company experienced a whirlwind start to the year as owing to the pandemic, Robinhood drew new retail investors to its stock trading app. During a Reddit-fueled trading frenzy in January, Robinhood added 3 million users, JMP Securities estimated.

However, the sudden rise pushed Robinhood to the centre of a controversy after it was used to pump up the prices of beaten-down stocks like GameStop, which has seen extreme volatility in its share price.

Its co-founder and chief executive Vlad Tenev was among executives called to testify at a recent congressional hearing on retail investing.

Tenev denied that the trading app was part of any effort to manipulate stock prices.

“All I can say is Robinhood played it by the books,” he told lawmakers, AFP reported.

Robinhood was founded in 2013 by Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, who were roommates at Stanford. They started in finance selling trading software to hedge funds, before starting Robinhood to develop ways for everyday retail investors to buy and sell stocks without paying commissions.

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The app popular among retail investors has a stated goal to “democratize finance for all,” allowing free stock trades even for small amounts.

Robinhood’s popularity skyrocketed when they opened the door to cryptocurrency in early 2018, allowing users to purchase bitcoin, ethereum and numerous other digital currencies on the app the same way they buy stocks.