What happened: Robinhood stock jumped about 3% on Wednesday and continued to gain in after-hours trading.
What’s behind the move: The financial services company announced that it will now allow artificial intelligence agents to trade or make credit card purchases on behalf of customers on its platform. Robinhood’s 27.5 million customers will now be able to open an agentic trading account, separate from the rest of their portfolio, to allow an AI agent to make decisions on their behalf.
Right now, agentic trading is limited to equity trading. For example, an AI agent can help a long-term investor understand and rebalance their portfolio. Following testing, agentic trading will open up to options, crypto, event contracts, and futures trading as well.
Robinhood will also allow users to connect AI agents to its virtual credit card, which is available to Gold Card customers. The agent can look for the best prices and product availability, and make purchases based on what the user tells it. It will also allow users to set spending limits and manually approve expenses.
Read more: Robinhood Gold Credit Card review: 3% cash back for investors
What else you need to know: Robinhood is no stranger to trying to get a first-mover advantage on a potential market trend.
Mizuho Securities managing director Dan Dolev called this a “natural progression” of the Robinhood mentality, “where they tend to be first to a lot of cutting-edge features,” such as the 2025 launch of a prediction markets hub.
Dolev said it’s also more of Robinhood bringing “Wall Street to Main Street.” “It gives retail investors automation tools that are typically reserved for hedge funds and trading desks,” he said.
Whether agentic AI capabilities result in an uptick in trading will be something to watch, Dolev said. In the first quarter, Robinhood’s equity trading volumes were up 54% year over year to $638 billion, with the second quarter off to a hot start already.
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Brooke DiPalma is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @BrookeDiPalma or email her at bdipalma@yahoofinance.com.
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