Webull shares slide after House committee says its ties to China put U.S. investors at risk

Webull shares were down about 20% in morning trading on Wednesday after a bipartisan House committee concluded that the online brokerage, which presents itself as an American company, is tied to China through its ownership, engineers, technology and data flows in ways that could put U.S. customers' money and information at risk.

The House Select Committee on China said there was "a profound gap" between Webull's marketing as "an American company" and how the St. Petersburg, Florida-based firm is actually controlled, in a report released Wednesday and first reported by CNBC. "Webull's ownership architecture, technical workforce, technology infrastructure, cross-border data routing, corporate financing, and compliance frameworks are tied in structural ways to the People's Republic of China," the committee found.

The report is a congressional finding, not an enforcement action. House committees cannot fine a company or bar it from doing business, and no securities regulator had announced any action against Webull by midmorning. The committee also had not posted the full report on its website by then, so any recommendations it makes were not yet public.

What the committee says

The panel said its concerns had "escalated" since October 2025, when Webull began carrying customer cash directly, according to a regulatory filing it cited. That, it said, creates a "structural exposure of billions of dollars in American capital." It put Webull's customer assets at $24.6 billion.

The committee said Webull's "software development, data pipelines, and core engineering operations" depend on infrastructure subject to Chinese law, which can compel companies to cooperate with the government, including by handing over data. It also said the company had understated its presence in China. Webull initially told the committee that it "does not have any offices or employees based in the PRC," the report said, while its mainland subsidiary, Hunan Weibu, grew to 863 employees, or 62% of the company's global workforce.

"Using technology providers in mainland China and an opaque China-linked ownership structure, Webull exposes its data to our foremost adversary," said Rep. John Moolenaar, the Michigan Republican who chairs the committee. "Investors should heed this information when choosing who they do business with."

The committee first pressed Webull in a November 2024 letter to Anthony Denier, now the company's president, signed by Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamoorthi, then the panel's top Democrat. It asked whether any U.S. user data was stored outside the United States or in China and whether Webull had any employees located there.

What Webull's own filings show

Several of the facts at the center of the dispute appear in Webull's own disclosures. In its annual report for 2025, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in April, the company said Hunan Weibu Information Technology employed 863 people, 62% of its staff, at the end of 2025 and is subject to Chinese jurisdiction. It said its principal research and development center is in Changsha, China, where it is building a new facility, and that founder and CEO Anquan Wang, a Chinese citizen, held 79.2% of the voting power as of March 31 while owning 16.4% of the shares.

The same filing argued that Webull falls outside laws aimed at companies with ties to China. It said its main operations are in the U.S., its work in mainland China is limited to research and development and technical support, and personal data of customers of its U.S. broker-dealer is stored on servers in the United States. Webull began in 2016 as an app developed under Hunan Fumi Information Technology, a Chinese company that the filing says has had no affiliation with Webull since August 2022.

The $24.6 billion the committee cited matches what Webull reported for the end of 2025. By the end of June, customer assets had grown to $28.5 billion across 5.1 million funded accounts.

Webull disputes the findings

"It is deeply disappointing that the Select Committee published a report containing significant inaccuracies and unsupported conclusions without ever seeking clarification from Webull," a company spokesperson said. Webull said its U.S. business is run from St. Petersburg and New York, that U.S. customer data is stored in the U.S. and that "access to sensitive customer data is controlled by the U.S." It said it remained prepared to answer questions "with the same transparency we bring to the SEC, FINRA, and regulators worldwide."

Shares fall, and other brokers slip

Webull shares were down 19.7% at $5.85 at 10:38 a.m. Eastern, after trading as low as $5.51, compared with Tuesday's close of $7.28. A loss that size would be the stock's steepest one-day drop since April 2025, Nasdaq data show. Other online brokers were lower, too: Futu Holdings was down 5.2%, UP Fintech Holding 2.5% and Robinhood Markets 3.3%, while the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.7%.