Robinhood CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev speaks at a Robinhood Markets event in New York City, USA on March 4, 2026.
David Dee Delgado | Reuters
Individual investors may soon be able to hand over the keys to their portfolios, and even their wallets, to artificial intelligence.
Robinhood on Wednesday unveiled a tool that lets AI agents trade and buy stocks on your behalf, one of the first attempts to bring autonomous financial technology to retail investors rather than institutions.
The new products, Agenttic Trading and Agenttic Credit Cards, allow customers to connect third-party AI assistants to execute investment strategies and spending instructions with minimal human involvement. Users can instruct agents to rebalance their portfolios, monitor themes such as AI stocks, and automatically execute trading strategies.
Individual AI agents can also search for transactions and complete purchases using a designated virtual credit card.
“Our mission has always been to democratize finance for everyone, and now that mission extends to AI agents,” CEO Vlad Tenev said in a statement.
The development comes as hedge funds and exchange-traded fund providers increasingly deploy AI-driven quantitative systems to automate investment decisions, but such technology remains largely out of reach for retail clients.
Robinhood’s move raises several safety issues, leaving autonomous trading in the hands of smaller, less sophisticated traders who don’t have the same risk controls as Wall Street institutions. Robinhood tried to address this with some guardrails.
The company said its dedicated “proxy trading” accounts are separate from the main portfolio and restrict access to specifically allocated funds users. The system also provides notifications whenever a transaction occurs and allows customers to disconnect from the agent immediately if necessary. Initial beta support covers stock trading, with plans to add options, cryptocurrencies, and futures later.
Robinhood also said investors maintain control through spending limits, manual approvals, and a fraud monitoring system that allows them to review both user instructions and the actions of their agents in the event of a dispute.
— CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed reporting.
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