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Article · 2026-10-07 · 8 min read · Online brokerage · Stocks

House China committee report calls Webull a national security risk

The House China committee's report, shared exclusively with CNBC and not yet on the committee's website when this was written on Wednesday 7 October, says Webull is 'tied in structural ways' to China and misrepresented how many of its staff work there; Webull's own annual report counts 863 employees at its mainland subsidiary, 62 percent of the total, and 79.2 percent of the votes for its founder, and a Webull spokesperson said the report contains 'significant inaccuracies'.

By the desk. Researched and written by an AI model from the sources listed at the end; nothing here restates another publication's text.

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What the committee released

The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, the panel chaired by Representative John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, released a report on Webull Corporation, the online brokerage, on Wednesday 7 October, CNBC and Quartz reported. CNBC wrote that the committee shared the report exclusively with it, calling it the committee's 'new report being released Wednesday'. The committee's own text could not be read for this piece: at 9:59 a.m. New York time on Wednesday 7 October its press releases page listed nothing on Webull, its newest item dated Tuesday 6 October, and its Investigations and Reports page listed nothing newer than Thursday 13 August. Every finding below is therefore the committee's as CNBC and Quartz reported it. ^{[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]}

The report follows a request the committee made in 2024, as CNBC and Quartz noted. In a letter dated 25 November 2024 and signed by Moolenaar as chairman and Raja Krishnamoorthi as ranking member, the committee wrote to Anthony Denier, chief executive of Webull Financial LLC, Webull's American broker-dealer, a firm registered to trade securities for customers, that Webull 'maintains close ties with entities based in the PRC', the People's Republic of China. It asked for 'Documentation sufficient to show the relationship between Hunan Weibu and Webull', asked whether any American user data is stored outside the United States or in the PRC, and asked, 'As of the date of this letter, does Webull have any employees, whether full- or part-time, located in the PRC?', with answers requested by 31 December 2024. Webull's annual reports say the letter was delivered on 5 December 2024. ^{[5, 6, 7, 1, 2]}

What the committee says it found

The report's central finding, as CNBC quotes it: '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 'a profound gap' between Webull's public marketing as 'an American company' and actual control of the firm, which is based in St. Petersburg, Florida, CNBC reported. It said Webull represents a national security risk because 'critical backend systems, personnel and data flows may remain exposed to the Chinese Communist Party's mandatory intelligence laws and coercive demands', and that the firm's 'software development, data pipelines, and core engineering operations' depend on infrastructure subject directly to Beijing's laws, which, CNBC wrote, can compel firms to cooperate with the government in myriad ways, including data transfers. Quartz reported the same conclusions. ^{[1, 2]}

On staff, the committee alleges that Webull misrepresented how many of its employees are based in China. In the report, CNBC wrote, the committee said the company initially told it that it 'does not have any offices or employees based in the PRC' and that 'all Firm employees are located in the United States'; the committee says the firm remains operationally concentrated in China, with its mainland subsidiary, Hunan Weibu, growing to 863 employees, 62 percent of the company's global workforce. Quartz reported the same 863 and called it 'nearly two-thirds' of the worldwide headcount. ^{[1, 2]}

On money and structure, the report found that Webull Corporation, a holding company incorporated in the Cayman Islands, holds $24.6 billion in customer assets, and the committee said concerns about the company have 'escalated' since October 2025, when Webull began carrying customer cash directly, according to a regulatory filing the committee cited; it alleges that this creates a 'structural exposure of billions of dollars in American capital', CNBC reported. Beside a United States holding company, Webull Holdings (US) Inc., the report says Webull's technology structure includes a Singapore entity, Webull Technologies Pte. Ltd, and that Webull uses a mainland China subsidiary that supports technology development and platform operations; CNBC added that the company traces its origins to Hunan Fumi Information Technology Co., Ltd., the Chinese company that originally launched the business. Moolenaar told CNBC that Webull's 'China-based operations put American investors and their data at risk' and that 'Using technology providers in mainland China and an opaque China-linked ownership structure, Webull exposes its data to our foremost adversary.' He added: 'Investors should heed this information when choosing who they do business with.' ^{[1, 2]}

What Webull's filings say

Webull's own annual reports disclose the China headcount the committee cites. The report on Form 20-F for 2025, filed on Thursday 9 April 2026, says 'our mainland China subsidiary, Hunan Weibu Information Technology Co., Ltd., employs 863 employees', 62 percent of its staff at 31 December 2025, when it had 1,396 employees in all, 800 of them in research and development and technology; the report for 2024, filed on 25 April 2025, gave 731 employees at Hunan Weibu, 61 percent, at the end of 2024. The 2025 report lists Hunan Weibu, set up on 6 September 2021, among its wholly owned subsidiaries as a 'Technology Support and Development Subsidiary' and says its 'principal research and development center is located in Changsha, China', where a new research and development facility has been under construction since October 2025; it lists leased offices and facilities in 15 other cities, by the desk's count, Hangzhou and Hong Kong among them. The report gives six facts on which it bases its view that it does not fall within the laws and rules aimed at companies with connections to China; the last is that its 'operations in mainland China are limited to research and development and technical support functions'. ^{[6, 7]}

Set beside Webull's filings, the committee's account agrees on the figures and differs on two points. The 863 employees and the 62 percent are the figures in Webull's 2025 annual report, and its reports for 2024 and 2025, filed on 25 April 2025 and 9 April 2026, both disclosed hundreds of staff at the mainland subsidiary; the committee's allegation concerns what Webull told the committee, and neither CNBC nor Quartz says when Webull gave that answer. The committee's 2024 letter said Webull 'currently appears to share personnel with both Fumi Technology and Hunan Weibu', Fumi Technology being Hunan Fumi, while Webull's 2025 report says that in August 2022 it ended the contracts, called variable interest entity arrangements, through which its main operations, then held by Hunan Fumi, had been controlled rather than owned, 'following which Hunan Fumi no longer has any affiliation with us'. And the letter is dated 25 November 2024, while Webull's annual reports say it was delivered on 5 December 2024. ^{[1, 2, 5, 6, 7]}

On ownership, the 2025 report says Webull's founder, chairman and chief executive, Anquan Wang, 'is a citizen of the People's Republic of China' and beneficially owns 16.4 percent of Webull's ordinary shares, including all of the Class B shares; to own shares beneficially is to hold the power to vote them or to sell them. Class B shares carry 20 votes each against one for each Class A share, and his holding represented 79.2 percent of Webull's total voting power at 31 March 2026. The 2024 report gave about 81.4 percent following the closing of the business combination, Webull's merger with SK Growth Opportunities Corporation, formerly a blank check company, which brought its shares to market. He holds the shares through companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, the 2025 report says, and may also vote 10,058,435 Class A shares held by five limited partnerships with addresses in Beijing, Tianjin and Hong Kong under a proxy agreement of 15 August 2025, subject to its conditions. The report adds that five of the six members of its board and senior management are United States citizens based in the United States. ^{[6, 7]}

On data and cash, the 2025 report says all of the personally identifiable information of the customers of Webull Financial 'is stored in servers located in the United States and cannot be transmitted outside of the United States or accessed by our non-U.S. employees without permission and oversight from our U.S. personnel'. It dates the change the committee cites: after its move to an omnibus clearing model, completed in October 2025, 'customer funds are now deposited with and carried directly by Webull rather than held at Apex Clearing', the firm that still clears and settles its American trades. Under that model the customer's account is 'held by Webull Financial as carrying broker' and cleared through Apex; the move began in 2022, most American accounts moved during 2024, and the move of the margin accounts, in which customers borrow to invest, was completed in October 2025. Webull's payables due to customers, which the report says include the cash it holds for the accounts it carries this way, stood at $2.67 billion at 31 December 2025, against $1.38 billion a year earlier. ^[6]

The $24.6 billion the committee cites matches the customer assets Webull reported at 31 December 2025: the value of the stocks, exchange-traded funds, options, warrants, futures and cash in customers' Webull brokerage accounts, net of what they owe on margin. Webull's half-year report, furnished to the SEC on Friday 11 September, gives $28.5 billion at 30 June 2026, with 28.2 million registered users, people who have signed up on its platform without necessarily opening a brokerage account, and 5.1 million funded accounts, accounts a customer has put money into. ^{[6, 8, 1]}

Webull's response

Webull answered through a spokesperson, CNBC reported: 'It is deeply disappointing that the Select Committee published a report containing significant inaccuracies and unsupported conclusions without ever seeking clarification from Webull.' The spokesperson said by email that 'Webull's U.S. business is conducted from its global headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida and its office in New York City, while U.S. customer data is stored in the U.S. and access to sensitive customer data is controlled by the U.S.', and: 'We remain prepared to address any questions directly and with the same transparency we bring to the SEC, FINRA, and regulators worldwide.' FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is one of the self-regulatory organizations, overseen by the SEC, of which Webull Financial is a member. ^{[1, 5, 6]}

The press accounts differ on whether Webull had answered. Quartz, in its version updated at 7:40 a.m. New York time, wrote that 'Webull did not respond to a request for comment on the report, according to CNBC'; CNBC's article, first published at 7:00 a.m. and updated since, carries the statement above. In its 2025 annual report, Webull said it believed the claims in the committee's letter and in an April 2024 letter from the attorneys general of 14 states 'were largely based on outdated and inaccurate information about us', that it was cooperating with both, and that it had 'not received further requests' from either 'in more than one year'. By 9:59 a.m. on Wednesday 7 October Webull had furnished no report on Form 6-K, the report a foreign issuer furnishes to the SEC between its annual reports, about the committee's findings; its newest 6-K, of Thursday 1 October, carries the notice of its general meeting. ^{[2, 1, 6, 10, 9]}

What settles it next

The first record still to come is the committee's own document: CNBC reported that the report was being released on Wednesday, and until it is posted its full findings, its sources and any recommendations are known only through CNBC's and Quartz's accounts, neither of which describes a recommendation or a next step. The next date Webull's own filings set is its 2026 general meeting, on Friday 30 October at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time at 200 Carillon Parkway in St. Petersburg and by live webcast, for holders of record at the close of business on Friday 25 September. Shareholders vote on new articles of association, the company's charter, which the proxy statement says 'will not, by themselves' change the structure of one vote for each Class A share and twenty for each Class B share, and on a 2026 employee share purchase plan reserving 5,000,000 Class A shares. ^{[1, 2, 3, 9]}

Who it reaches

Webull Corporation, traded as BULL, directly: the report is about its ownership, its staff and its systems, and its own filings record the mainland China subsidiary, the founder's 79.2 percent of the votes and the October 2025 change in who carries customer cash. Through it the findings reach Webull's customers, whose data and cash they concern: 5.1 million funded accounts and $28.5 billion of customer assets at 30 June 2026, by Webull's count. CNBC and Quartz name Robinhood, Charles Schwab and E-Trade as Webull's competitors, but neither reports that the committee drew any path from Webull to them. ^{[1, 2, 6, 8]}

Sources

Every stock is a company; the desk grades the company behind the stock. This article describes; it does not recommend. Adjacent means the company is not named in the event and the path by which it is reached is stated above.

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