Webull China ties expose U.S. investor data to Beijing

A bipartisan congressional committee has concluded that Webull‘s China ties create a genuine national security threat to U.S. investors, after discovering the trading platform’s ownership, engineering and data infrastructure are structurally integrated with China’s government apparatus, according to a report shared exclusively with CNBC.

The stock fell nearly 30% in premarket trading on the news.

For years, Webull marketed itself as an American company headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, serving 28 million users globally. The House Select Committee on China found a “profound gap” between that image and how the firm actually operates.

How Webull’s China ties run through the business

The committee’s complaint is not that a Chinese person founded the company or that Webull once had Chinese backing. Those facts are publicly known: Wang Anquan, who worked at Alibaba and Xiaomi, launched Webull in 2016. The problem, according to the panel, is structural and ongoing.

Webull’s parent company is incorporated in the Cayman Islands and holds $24.6 billion in customer assets. But the firm’s technical backbone flows through entities in Singapore and mainland China. The company operates a subsidiary called Hunan Weibu, based in China’s Hunan province, which handles software development, data pipelines and core engineering. That subsidiary has grown to 863 employees, representing 62% of Webull’s total global workforce.

When the committee first asked Webull about its China presence in 2024, the firm told lawmakers it had “no offices or employees based in the People’s Republic of China” and that “all Firm employees are located in the United States.” The report found this claim to be false.

This matters because Chinese law gives Beijing’s government broad powers to compel companies operating there to hand over data or grant access to systems. Webull’s China ties mean that American customer information could theoretically be obtained through legal pressure on the Chinese subsidiary, even if U.S. data physically lives on American servers.

What the risks actually are for investors

The committee flagged a specific escalation point: in October 2025, Webull began holding customer cash directly instead of routing it through a third party. That change meant billions of dollars in American capital now sit on the company’s balance sheet, making the firm itself a potential target for a hostile government or a pathway to disrupt the broader financial system.

The concern is not that Webull will steal your money tomorrow. It is that in a geopolitical crisis, the Chinese government could use its leverage over Webull’s China subsidiary to demand data, freeze accounts, or create chaos. China has shown willingness to weaponise access to Western infrastructure during tensions.

Rep. John Moolenaar, who chairs the committee, told CNBC that “using technology providers in mainland China and an opaque China-linked ownership structure, Webull exposes its data to our foremost adversary.”

Why does the company’s financing structure matter?

Because funding sources can create dependence. If Webull’s corporate financing also runs through Chinese entities or Chinese investors, the company faces incentives to comply with Beijing’s wishes. The committee found that Webull’s China ties extend to how the company is capitalized and structured, not merely where people work.

Webull’s response and what happens next

The company disputed the findings in a statement, saying the report contained “significant inaccuracies and unsupported conclusions” and that Congress never asked Webull directly for clarification. Webull maintained that U.S. customer data is stored in America and that access is controlled by the U.S. team.

That defense does not fully address the committee’s concern. Even if data physically sits in Florida, the committee worries that Webull’s China ties to its engineering and ownership structures mean Beijing could theoretically compel the company to grant access, add backdoors, or alter systems in harmful ways.

The committee’s findings come as the Trump administration engages in diplomatic talks with China, suggesting this is not an isolated scandal but a symptom of a wider worry: that Chinese entities have embedded themselves inside American financial infrastructure where they could cause damage if relations deteriorate.

For investors using Webull or similar platforms, the core question is control and trust. If you trade through a broker whose critical systems depend on infrastructure in an adversarial nation, you are accepting a geopolitical risk that traditional brokers like Schwab or E-Trade do not carry in the same way. Whether that risk is material to your own decision depends on how long you plan to hold money in the account and how much you value the insurance of purely domestic infrastructure.

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Originally reported by CNBC. Facts verified; analysis and wording are Thewealthora’s own.

Ethan Caldwell

Executive Editor, Markets

Ethan Caldwell is Executive Editor of Thewealthora's Finance Wire, the desk that carries this site's fast coverage of US equities, corporate earnings, central bank decisions and the macro calendar.

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