At Lightyear, our mission is to create successful investors. Today, only around 20% of Europeans grow their wealth on the stock market. We’re working to elevate that number, and make sure everyone across Europe can build a financially secure future for themselves.
And since we launched Lightyear in 2021, we’ve made some hugely exciting progress on that mission. By today, you, our customers have made over $150M on Lightyear, and over 90% of you were successful on the stock market in 2025.
Geopolitics and technology dictated investment behaviour across Europe
In 2025, Lightyear’s investors’ reacted to happenings in geopolitics and rapid developments in technology and AI. In the first half of the year, investments into European instruments grew, peaking in March and April, when the US government suspended military aid to Ukraine and started to rework the US’ global tariffs. In those two months, investments in EU and UK stocks accounted for almost 40% of total trading volume. In comparison, in 2024, investments into European companies accounted for only 20% of stock transactions at its peak. Most EU volume in 2025 went to German stock markets, led by Rheinmetall and Siemens.
The second half of the year was mainly dictated by the AI sector. From September to November, most transaction volume went into the semiconductor, quantum computing and data center sectors. The trend was led by stocks such as NVIDIA, Rigetti Computing, IonQ and Iren Limited.
The average European investor beat the S&P 500 return (17.66%, VUAA), earning 19.26% on their investments in the past year. Investors benefited from rising markets by holding individual stocks, specifically US tech giants, who posted a strong year. Even in volatile moments, Lightyear investors remained strongly on the buy side, showing consistency and a long-term mindset in the stock markets.
Building for successful investors in 2025
We increasingly see that Lightyear investors make informed investment decisions based on what is happening in the world, which is why our priority last year was to build a product that keeps up with the economy in an ever-changing environment.
And we hit many exciting milestones along the way:
- Launched our Stocks & Shares and Cash ISAs
- Surpassed $1B in customer assets across all our markets
- Launched in 3 new countries: Sweden, Denmark and Bulgaria
- Raised our Series B, taking total funding to $58M
As our UK CEO, Wander, wraps up the year: “It’s great to see UK investors have had such a strong year, beating one of the world’s biggest markets while taking a measured approach to risk. This is a generation of investors who are globally aware and increasingly focused on long-term wealth-building, even when markets are uncertain. From a Lightyear perspective, our strong growth last year highlights the trust placed in us and the need for a truly user friendly investment platform – but we know we’re only getting started. In 2026, we’ll continue at full speed to build out a strong product offering, tailored to UK people and businesses.”
We’ve got no plans to slow down in 2026. On the contrary, we’re already hard at work on some very exciting projects. So, watch this space – and as always, if you have any feedback or questions to us, feel free to reach out.
Happy new year
The Lightyear Team
Disclaimer
Wander Rutgers is the UK CEO at Lightyear. He joined the company as an investor in the first round, advising Martin & Mihkel on compliance, operations and business development before joining the business full time as COO in May 2022. At Lightyear, Wander is focused on building out the brokerage, compliance and business functions to support growth and expansion.
Before Lightyear, Wander was President of Robinhood UK leading the business in its international expansion efforts. Before that, he was a Product Lead at Plum where he spearheaded the launch of its mutual fund investing product. Wander also held various roles at Wise (now TransferWise) across operations and product, including helping the company expand into dozens of new markets. He started his career as a strategy consultant at McKinsey in the Netherlands and earned his M.A. in Economics and Politics at the University of Edinburgh.