Baiju Bhatt, a co-founder and Co-CEO of the popular stock trading app Robinhood, has announced that he’ll relinquish his role as Co-CEO of the company and now leave the sole CEO position to its other co-founder Vlad Tenev. Bhatt will remain at the company as a co-founder and lead strategic business initiatives, Robinhood noted in a statement.

Bhatt’s relinquishing of his Co-CEO role follows rumors of Robinhood having sought banks to lead an initial public offering that could come as soon as next year. It’s possible that Robinhood decided to put away its dual-CEO in preparation for a public debut and in line with its expansion plans.

Currently, only a few public companies maintain a dual-CEO structure, one notable one being Netflix which appointed a Co-CEO just this July. In the past, companies like Salesforce and Oracle tried the dual-CEO structure but later backed away from the arrangement, in Salesforce’s case seeing its Co-CEO depart from the company entirely while Oracle scrapped the arrangement after the death of its then Co-CEO Mark Hurd last year.

Bhatt has served as Robinhood’s Co-CEO together with Vlad Tenev since they both founded the company in 2013. His departure marks a major leadership change for the company, which has in just seven years grown to become a major technology company by offering a commission-free stock trading service that has drawn some 13 million registered users.

Over the years, Robinhood has become one of the highest-valued private technology companies with a valuation of $11.7 billion from its most recent funding round. The company has raised a total of $2.2 billion in outside funding from a host of investors.

With rumors of an IPO swirling, Robinhood could be one of the next hottest companies to debut on the public markets. 

Photo: Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt by TechCrunch is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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