Webull Shares Crash Nearly 30% After House Panel Labels Its China Ties a National Security Risk

Webull, the digital investment platform with 28 million global users, saw its stock plunge as much as 31% in premarket trading and settle around 29% lower to approximately $5.15 on Wednesday after the bipartisan House Select Committee on China released a report declaring the company's ties to Beijing pose a national security threat to U.S. finance. The committee said it found a "profound gap" between how Webull presents itself as an American company and how it is actually controlled, concluding that Webull's corporate structure, technical workforce, technology, and financing are linked to China's government "in structural ways."

The committee shared its findings exclusively with CNBC ahead of the official release. The report flagged concerns including China-linked ownership, data routing, and customer-cash arrangements, and raised the risk that U.S. customer data could be exposed to Chinese surveillance. Webull pushed back, calling the report "inaccurate" and saying it contains "significant inaccuracies" and reached "unsupported conclusions." The company maintained that its U.S. business operates from its global headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida and a New York City office, and that U.S. customer data is stored domestically with access to sensitive data controlled by the U.S. entity.

The selloff spilled over into the broader retail brokerage sector, though peers fared far better: Robinhood fell roughly 3% and Interactive Brokers slipped about 2%, suggesting markets view the risk as specific to Webull rather than the industry at large. The committee's findings carry no automatic fine or ban, but analysts flagged a formal federal agency review as the next critical trigger for shareholders. Webull's stock is down roughly 25% year to date even before this week's drop.