Your AI agent can now trade for you on Robinhood. And buy stuff with your credit card too
Vlad Tenev, CEO and co-founder of Robinhood, at the Robinhood Markets, Inc. event held in New York, USA, on March 4, 2026. speaking at the event.
David Dee Delgado | Reuters
Retail investors will soon be able to hand over the keys to their portfolios and even their wallets to artificial intelligence.
Robinhood on Wednesday introduced tools that allow AI agents to trade stocks and make purchases on behalf of users; This was one of the first attempts to bring autonomous financial technology to ordinary investors rather than institutions.
The new products (Agent Trading and Agent Credit Card) allow customers to connect to third-party AI assistants to execute investment strategies or spending instructions with minimal human involvement. Users can instruct brokers to rebalance portfolios, track themes like AI stocks, or automatically execute trading strategies.
Individual AI agents can also search for deals and complete purchases using designated virtual credit cards.
“Our mission has always been to democratize finance for everyone, and now that mission includes AI agents,” CEO Vlad Tenev said in a statement.
The launch comes as hedge funds and exchange-traded fund providers increasingly use AI-driven and quantitative systems to automate investment decisions, but such technologies have remained largely inaccessible to retail clients.
The Robinhood move raises some security issues and leaves autonomous trading in the hands of less sophisticated smaller traders who don’t have the same risk controls as the Wall Street institution. Robinhood tried to solve this with some guardrails.
The company said its dedicated “representative trading” accounts were separated from its main portfolios and access was restricted to users of dedicated capital only. The system also provides notifications when trades occur and allows customers to immediately disconnect an agent if necessary. Initial beta support covers stock trading, with plans to add options, cryptocurrency and futures later.
Robinhood also said investors will remain in control through spending limits, manual approvals and fraud monitoring systems that can review both user instructions and an agent’s actions if disputes arise.
— CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed reporting.
