Key highlights:
Robinhood unveiled a new set of AI trading tools on Tuesday at its HOOD Summit event, including accounts that let AI agents trade on a customer’s behalf without needing approval.
Robinhood launches new AI agents
The new product was named Robinhood Agents, built into the Robinhood app. These AI agents can research markets, build trading strategies, and place trades for a customer at any hour of the day
An AI agent is different from a chatbot. A chatbot only answers questions, while an agent can take action, in this context, buying and selling stocks or other assets within limits the customer sets in advance.
Robinhood shared the plan in May, when it let tech-savvy customers connect outside AI models, like Anthropic’s Claude, to a brokerage account to research and place trades. Since that launch, over 150,000 customers have opened these agentic accounts.
This new product builds on the earlier version, making the experience much easier to set up. It integrates everything into the Robinhood app instead of requiring customers to connect outside tools.
Abhishek Fatehpuria, Robinhood’s vice president of product management, shared his thoughts on the redesign.
“We were like, ‘Oh, if we made this like 100 times easier and more delightful,” he said. “You could probably go from 150,000 people using it to millions.'”
Customers using the new accounts can tell their agent to watch the markets and execute trades, including setting up recurring strategies that run automatically when certain conditions are met. By default, every trade an agent wants to make requires the customer’s approval first.
However, customers also have the option to turn the approval requirement off entirely, allowing the agent to trade completely on its own. Agents can only use money that has been transferred into a separate agentic account, not a customer’s brokerage balance.
To start, Robinhood will offer access to AI models built by Anthropic and OpenAI. The company said it will charge customers for using these models through its platform but made no mention of whether it has any revenue-sharing deals in place with these AI companies.
A “Loops” feature and a data marketplace
Robinhood also previewed an upcoming feature called Loops, which is designed to let an agent run a trading strategy continuously, day and night, without the customer needing to check in.
“The stock market never sleeps, and neither should your portfolio,” Robinhood said.
Additionally, the exchange is launching Agent Apps, a subscription marketplace. Through the feature, companies like Unusual Whales and Nasdaq can sell premium market data to their customers.
CEO Vlad Tenev said the new tools are part of its effort to bring capabilities “once reserved for hedge funds, big banks, and quant firms” to everyday traders.
Customers bear the risk, Robinhood warns
Robinhood was direct about who takes the fall if anything goes wrong. The company said customers “assume all risk for trades executed by AI agents and for any use of your data by third-party LLM providers.” It also stated plainly that the exchange “does not control, supervise, monitor, recommend, or audit agents.”
Once turned on, Robinhood said Loops “may place, modify, or cancel trades in your account automatically, without prompting you for approval on each transaction.”
The company added that Loops will follow a customer’s instructions exactly as set up, “including during periods of market volatility.”
Source:: Robinhood Rolls Out AI Agents That Trade for Investors 24/7