The Architect of Access: How DriveWealth's Founder Won by Democratizing Wall Street

NEW YORK, NY – June 22, 2026 – Robert Cortright, the Founder and Executive Chairman of DriveWealth, has been named an EY US Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 New York Award winner, a recognition that shines a spotlight on a career dedicated to dismantling the financial industry's velvet ropes. While the award celebrates a single individual, its significance resonates with millions of new investors worldwide who can now access U.S. equities, thanks to the innovation Cortright championed: fractional share trading.

The win is not just a capstone on a successful year but on a multi-decade journey. Cortright's work has fundamentally altered the landscape of retail investing, transforming it from an exclusive club into a globally accessible market. This award, one of the most prestigious in the business world, validates the thesis he bet on in 2012: that everyone, regardless of wealth or geography, deserves a chance to own a piece of the world's most powerful companies.

A Career in Dismantling Barriers

This isn't Robert Cortright's first time on the EY awards stage. He previously won a regional award in 2009 for co-founding FX Solutions, a venture that opened the complex world of foreign exchange trading to retail investors. This early success established a pattern for his career: identify a structural barrier in the financial markets and build the technology to tear it down. After seeing how retail investors were empowered in currency markets, he turned his attention to U.S. equities.

In 2012, the investing world looked very different. Owning a single share of a leading company like Amazon or Google could cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, placing it far out of reach for the average person. Legacy brokerage infrastructure, geographic restrictions, and high minimums created a system where only the already-wealthy could meaningfully participate. Cortright saw this exclusion not as a feature, but as a flaw to be engineered away. This was the genesis of DriveWealth.

The company was founded on a simple yet revolutionary premise: what if you could buy just $10 of a $1000 stock? The concept, now widely known as fractional share trading, was pioneered by DriveWealth. “This recognition is a reflection of the incredible team at DriveWealth and the partners who believed in our vision when fractional investing was still just an idea,” said Cortright. “We've spent over a decade building the infrastructure that allows investors, no matter their financial status, to build diversified portfolios that compound over time.”

The Engine Room of the Retail Investing Boom

While many consumers may be unfamiliar with the DriveWealth name, millions have interacted with its technology. The company operates on a global B2B "Brokerage-as-a-Service" (BaaS) model, acting as the invisible engine powering the investment features inside many popular digital wallets, challenger banks, and financial apps.

Instead of building a consumer-facing brand to compete with Schwab or Fidelity, DriveWealth built a highly flexible, API-driven platform that other businesses can integrate. This toolkit allows partners—from fintech startups to established consumer brands—to embed trading and investing experiences directly into their own products. DriveWealth handles the complex backend: the real-time trade execution, clearing, custody, and intricate regulatory compliance required to operate in the U.S. securities market. As a registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC, it provides the legal and technical scaffolding that partners need to launch investment offerings quickly and safely.

This B2B strategy proved to be a masterstroke. It allowed DriveWealth to scale globally, powering over 100 institutions in more than 30 countries. The platform now processes up to 10 million trades per day, with billions in daily notional value, enabling partners to offer everything from traditional investment accounts to innovative features like rounding up everyday purchases into fractional stock investments. This infrastructure is the unseen force that has fueled much of the recent explosion in retail investing.

The Fractional Revolution: A New Era of Wealth Creation

The impact of fractional shares extends far beyond simply lowering the cost of entry. It has fundamentally rewired the principles of personal finance for a new generation. For small investors, the ability to buy stock in dollar amounts rather than whole shares unlocks strategies previously reserved for those with more capital.

First and foremost, it enables true diversification. An investor with only $100 can now build a portfolio spread across dozens of high-value companies and ETFs, mitigating risk in a way that would be impossible if they had to purchase full shares. Second, it makes systematic investing strategies like dollar-cost averaging seamless. By investing a fixed amount regularly, investors can smooth out market volatility and build wealth gradually over time, turning small, consistent actions into significant long-term assets.

“With many leading stocks trading at $500 per share, $1000 per share, and higher, fractional investing removes a key barrier to participation and long-term wealth creation," Cortright noted. "That is the power of fractionalization, and we're just getting started.” While the innovation has some limitations—fractional shareholders typically don't get voting rights, and transferring fractional positions between brokers can be difficult—its net effect has been overwhelmingly positive for financial inclusion. It has empowered a more diverse, global, and younger demographic to begin their wealth-building journey.

The Prestige of a Serial Innovator

The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program, now in its 41st year, is more than just an award; it's a global benchmark for entrepreneurial excellence. The selection process is famously rigorous, with an independent panel of judges assessing candidates on their ingenuity, purpose, growth, and long-term impact. Winners join an elite alumni network that includes the founders of companies like LinkedIn, Starbucks, and KIND Healthy Snacks.

For Cortright, this New York regional win is a powerful affirmation of his long-term vision. As a two-time regional winner, he stands out as a serial disruptor who has successfully transformed not one, but two different sectors of the financial industry. It's a testament to a career spent looking at established systems and asking, "How can this be better and for whom?"

As a regional winner, Cortright is now in the running for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 National Awards, which will be presented in November at the annual Strategic Growth Forum®. From there, the national winner will go on to compete for the title of EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™. For Cortright and DriveWealth, the award validates a decade of building the foundational plumbing for a more equitable financial future, proving that the most profound innovations are often the ones that empower the many, one fraction at a time.