By Andrew Welsch
For DIY investors, Robinhood Markets can now be their "BYOAI" brokerage: bring your own AI. The company says it plans to enable customers to connect their own artificial intelligence agents to Robinhood to conduct trades and initiate credit card transactions on their behalf.
"Our mission has always been to democratize finance for all, and now, that mission extends to AI agents," says Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev.
Robinhood says that with its new agentic trading capability customers can open a dedicated account for their AI agent that is separate from the rest of their portfolio, meaning the AI agent only has access to funds in that account. A customer can, for example, have an AI agent that analyzes their portfolio holdings for concentration risk and rebalances accordingly. Agentic trading is launching in a beta test mode with support for only equities initially, according to Robinhood.
"The early adopters of [AI] agents want to be able to bring their own tools and agents to the Robinhood ecosystem," Abhishek Fatehpuria, vice president of product at Robinhood, tells Barron's.
Last year, Robinhood unveiled Cortex, its AI-powered investing assistant that provides customers with portfolio analysis and insights. Nearly one million customers have used Cortex, according to the company's first-quarter earnings report. Robinhood had more than 27 million funded customers at the end of the first quarter.
Fatehpuria says that investors have been increasingly using AI tools to get insights into investing strategies. Because the technology is still new, there are many potential use cases. "We're really excited to see what people build," Fatehpuria says. "This is such a nascent technology."
In addition to trading, Robinhood is introducing a new "Agentic Credit Card," which it says will allow customers to connect their own AI agent to a dedicated virtual Robinhood credit card that they can use like a normal credit card. A customer could use this capability to have an AI agent automatically search for and buy hard-to-get tickets to a Broadway play or concert, for example. AI agents won't have access to a customer's primary credit card number or any other Robinhood account information, according to the company. Customers can delete the virtual card at any time with the tap of a button, according to the company.
Robinhood says the Agentic Credit Card is available to existing Robinhood Gold Card customers, with support for the forthcoming Robinhood Platinum Card expected to follow when the card launches later this year.
The company believes that this is a unique offering within the credit card sector, says Deepak Rao, vice president and general manager of Robinhood Money. "I think this separates us from the legacy players," he says.
Robinhood says the new AI capabilities come with guardrails, such as spending controls, account limits, and the ability to manually approve every credit card purchase.
Robinhood's announcement is the latest example of how financial services and AI are blending together. Banks, brokerages, and other financial services companies have been launching AI tools for customers that they hope will deepen client relationships. For example, Citigroup unveiled in April an AI avatar named Sky that can answer clients' financial questions. And OpenAI is adding a personal finance function to ChatGPT, enabling customers to get personalized guidance on money matters from its AI chatbot.
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 27, 2026 08:31 ET (12:31 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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