Opendoor surges 80% as cofounders return and $40 million investment to be made

Shares of online real estate platform Opendoor jumped almost 80% yesterday, September 11. Investors reacted positively to the appointment of a new chief executive, a $40 million investment, and the return of the company’s cofounders to the board. The name has become a meme stock this year: over the last three months, thanks to retail investors, it has risen in price more than 1,700%.

Opendoor shares soared 79.5% to $10.50 apiece yesterday. The share price hits its highest intraday mark since February 2022.

The massive gain came after Opendoor announced three big changes at once: the appointment of a new CEO, the return of the cofounders to the board, and a new investment.

Former Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian will become the new CEO, replacing Carrie Wheeler, who resigned last month under pressure from unhappy shareholders.

In addition, cofounders Keith Rabois and Eric Wu have been appointed to the board. Wu was Opendoor's CEO from 2013 to 2022 and chair of the board from 2020 to 2022. Rabois has served on the boards of Reddit and Yelp. Lead Independent Director Eric Feder explained that the pair will "inject the 'founder DNA' and energy at a pivotal moment for Opendoor."

Wu, alongside Khosla Ventures, where Rabois is CEO, will invest $40 million of equity capital into Opendoor through a private purchase to "accelerate growth."

In the summer of 2025, Opendoor stock became a meme stock "overnight," the Wall Street Journal points out.

It went public during the 2020 SPAC craze, grew very quickly, and then saw the economics of its business crushed by higher interest rates, racking up billions of dollars in losses. Its shares hit a low of $0.51 apiece on June 25, putting the company at risk of delisting from the Nasdaq.

That is when Eric Jackson, manager of the small Canadian hedge fund EMJ Capital, saw an attractive entry point. He wrote about it on social media, after which Opendoor shares were bought up by an army of retail investors.

On July 21, almost 1.9 billion Opendoor shares traded, accounting for roughly 10% of the volume of the entire U.S. stock market that day, the WSJ reported. Overall, from July 1 to September 11, the shares have soared more than 1,770%. 

However, after the company’s August 5 earnings report, disappointed new shareholders started a campaign to fire Wheeler as CEO.  "Carrie Wheeler is not the leader to take $OPEN to $82 and beyond," Jackson wrote on X. Wheeler's eventual resignation was said to be a unique case of investor activism involving vocal individuals.  

Wheeler has since filed paperwork giving notice of her intent to sell 7 million Opendoor shares worth roughly $35 million, the WSJ writes. That stake was worth $3.6 million as of late June, before the stock went viral on social media.  

According to MarketWatch, four of the nine analysts covering Opendoor recommend selling the stock ("sell" and "underweight" recommendations), while another four rate it a "hold" and only one a "buy." The average target price for Opendoor is $1.02 per share, about ten times lower than its current market value.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor