Stake (platform)

Stakeshop Pty Ltd
TypePrivately held company
Industry
  • Financial services
FoundedJanuary 8, 2016; 10 years ago (2016-01-08) in Sydney, Australia
Founder
  • Matt Leibowitz
  • Dan Silver
Headquarters
Sydney
,
Australia
Area served
  • Australia
  • New Zealand
Key people
  • Matt Leibowitz (CEO)
  • Geoff Lloyd (Chairman)
ServicesOnline brokerage
Number of employees
136 (2025)
Websitehttps://hellostake.com/

Stake (Stakeshop Pty Ltd) is an online investing platform launched in 2017 in Sydney, Australia. Stake offers Australian customers brokerage services for U.S. and ASX-listed equities, along with an income fund and SMSF administration. In New Zealand, Stake provides accounts access to Wall Street investments. As of 2022, Stake has over 54,000 accounts.

History

In 2016, Stake was founded by Matt Leibowitz (ex‑Optiver) and Dan Silver in Sydney. The Stake online brokerage platform was launched in August 2017.

The company raised approximately A$3.5m in 2019, A$40m in 2021 and A$50m in early 2022 from investors including Tiger Global Management and DST Global. By then, Stake had over A$2b in assets under management.

In January 2021, during the GameStop short squeeze, Stake experienced service outages that resulted in delayed fund transfers and cancelled open market orders. Soon after this, DriveWealth, Stake’s broker-dealer for U.S. equities, significantly raised its capital requirements for buying $GME, forcing Stake to halt trading in Gamestop. This drew criticism online, in part due to DriveWealth's payment for order flow practices. Stake denied taking part in PFOF routing in a subsequently deleted blog post. Later that year, Stake introduced CHESS-sponsored ASX trading.

In September 2026, Stake disclosed that some of its customers’ personal information had been affected by a data security incident at DriveWealth. According to Stake, information potentially affected included customers’ names, email addresses, telephone numbers and postal addresses, tax status and country of taxation, account numbers, and snapshots of aggregate portfolio values and cash balances.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Aussie company Stake lets you trade US shares from your phone – opening up Wall Street for your trading side hustle". Business Insider Australia. 2019-10-17. Archived from the original on October 19, 2019. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
  2. ↑ "Budget broker Stake snares 54,000 ASX traders". Australian Financial Review. 2022-01-06. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
  3. ↑ White, Louis (2018-10-30). "Stake's Founder Threw In A Highly Paid Job To Start An Investment App". GQ. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
  4. ↑ Koehn, Emma (2019-08-04). "'Be your own hedge fund': Investment startup Stake raises $3.5m". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
  5. ↑ "Tiger Global-backed startup brings $2 brokerage to Australia". euronews. 2021-09-13. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
  6. ↑ Waters, Cara (2021-05-17). "Aussie trading app Stake rebounds after GameStop frenzy with $40m raising". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
  7. ↑ "Australian fintech Stake raises a further $50 million as it gears up to launch crypto trading". SmartCompany. 2022-04-27. Retrieved 2022-04-29.
  8. ↑ "Stake shrugs off global rout with $90m funding round". Australian Financial Review. 2022-04-26. Retrieved 2022-04-29.
  9. ↑ Vickovich, Aleks (January 29, 2021). "Online broker Stake crashes amid Reddit trading frenzy". Australian Financial Review. Retrieved February 2, 2022.
  10. ↑ Kruger, Colin (2021-01-31). "Stake scrambles to fix outage triggered by GameStop trade frenzy". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
  11. ↑ Kruger, Colin (2021-02-02). "Local broker Stake forced to suspend GameStop trading". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2022-04-29.
  12. ↑ "DriveWealth Legal". DriveWealth. Retrieved 29 July 2026.
  13. ↑ "Archived: How Zero Works". Stake. Archived from the original on 19 July 2021. Retrieved 29 July 2026.
  14. ↑ Purcell, Kylie (2021-09-15). "Stake launches $3 ASX stock trades – is it the cheapest trading app? | Finder". finder.com.au. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
  15. ↑ Sharma, Yashee (2026-09-25). "Australian trading platform Stake caught in data breach". Nine.com.au. Retrieved 2026-09-25.