Roblox

Roblox Corporation operates Roblox, an online platform where users play, socialize and build 3D experiences created by an independent developer and creator community, paid for through the Robux virtual currency. David Baszucki and Erik Cassel founded the company in 2004, working from an office in Menlo Park, California, after earlier building the physics simulation business Knowledge Revolution. The platform launched in beta as DynaBlocks, was renamed Roblox in 2005 and formally released in 2006. Cassel died in 2013. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and Baszucki remains chief executive.

Roblox raised capital privately for well over a decade. In March 2017 it secured an $82 million round led by Meritech Capital Partners and Index Ventures. In June and July 2018 it sold about $150 million of Series F preferred stock; purchasers disclosed in its registration statement included Tiger Global, Altos Ventures, Meritech and Index Ventures. In February 2020 a $150 million Series G led by Andreessen Horowitz valued the company at $4 billion, with Altos, Tiger Global and Meritech also buying shares. In January 2021 Altimeter Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group led a Series H that sold about $535 million of stock at $45.00 per share and valued Roblox at $29.5 billion. First Round Capital was among the holders of more than 5% of the capital stock at the time of listing.

Roblox chose a direct listing over a conventional IPO, and its Class A shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RBLX on March 10, 2021, with early trading implying a valuation of about $41.9 billion. In its annual report for 2025, the company reported revenue of $4.89 billion, up from $3.60 billion in 2024, and bookings of $6.79 billion. It averaged 127 million daily active users across more than 180 countries in 2025, of whom about 1.8 million were daily unique paying users. The company still reported a consolidated net loss of $1.07 billion for the year, reflecting developer exchange fees, infrastructure and safety costs and research spending.

For investors, Roblox is a long-duration outcome. The company was 17 years old when it listed, and early backers such as First Round Capital still held more than 5% of its stock at the listing, while growth investors entering in 2017 through 2020 captured the step from a $4 billion private valuation to a public market value roughly ten times higher within about a year. The direct listing also gave existing holders immediate liquidity without a traditional lockup, a structure that drew attention from late-stage funds weighing exit routes.