Robinhood Lets AI Chatbots Trade Stocks on Users’ Behalf

Stock-trading platform Robinhood is opening up to artificial intelligence (AI) agents, allowing users to hand their trading decisions to the chatbots of their choice.

The commission-free trading app, which became a household name during the pandemic-era meme-stock craze, said May 27 that it is launching “agentic trading,” a feature that allows users to connect third-party AI agents and authorize them to buy and sell stocks with a pool of money set aside specifically for that purpose.

“Our mission has always been to democratize finance for all, and now, that mission extends to AI agents,” CEO Vlad Tenev said in a statement.

Under the setup, customers link an AI agent—such as Claude or ChatGPT—to a separate, dedicated account on Robinhood and deposit a specific amount of money into that account. Users can then instruct the agent to carry out tasks such as rebalancing a portfolio, tracking a theme, or executing a rules-based trading strategy.

The agents will be able to spend through designated virtual credit cards tied to the dedicated funds. Robinhood said this “agentic credit card” concept is designed to keep the user’s primary card details separated from the agent, while letting customers define spending limits and controls for what the agent can do.

This agentic trading feature will initially support equities only. The company plans to expand the product to additional asset classes, including options, crypto, event contracts, and futures, in later releases.

The rollout comes as financial institutions and consumer-facing tech companies race to add AI-related features, from tools that summarize market news and analyze portfolios to chatbots that take over routine customer-service tasks. But autonomous finance, whereby a generative AI algorithm does not merely offer suggestions but actually executes trades and payments, tests how much trust consumers are willing to place in systems that are still known to make mistakes.

On Robinhood’s part, it said it has safety measures meant to limit damage if an AI agent behaves unexpectedly. Keeping the activity in a dedicated “agentic” account would restrict the agent’s reach to only the capital a user deliberately allocates. Users also receive push notifications each time the agent places a trade, and they can disconnect the agent at any time.

Even with those controls, Robinhood is explicit that customers remain responsible for the outcomes.

“When you use an AI agent to place orders, all investment decisions are yours,” the company said. “Be aware that if you’ve asked your agent to take action without asking your approval, it can place trades without your confirmation.”

“Agentic trading involves significant risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment,” it added, warning that AI-driven strategies may “perform poorly under certain market conditions, move quickly, and be difficult to monitor or stop in real time.”

“This product may not be appropriate for all investors.”