Robinhood is chasing the traders who generate the most revenue, and it’s willing to hand them both automation and leverage to keep them on its platform

Robinhood unveiled an AI agent that can trade on a customer’s behalf and leveraged crypto perpetual futures on Tuesday at its HOOD Summit in Houston, according to CoinDesk. Both products target the active-trading segment that brokerages and offshore crypto exchanges have been competing hardest to win, and both keep that trading activity, and the fees and data it generates, inside Robinhood’s own app rather than sending customers elsewhere.

The two launches follow different playbooks but the same logic: give retail customers tools that were previously reserved for hedge funds and quant desks, and capture the trading volume that follows.

Key Takeaways

  • Robinhood Agents lets customers build an AI agent inside the app that researches markets and places trades, using models from labs including OpenAI, with GPT-Luna free through year-end.
  • Robinhood will offer crypto perpetual futures through Bitstamp, the exchange it acquired last year, with up to 10x leverage on bitcoin and ether and 3x on six other tokens.
  • Perps will carry a 0.01% per-trade fee through the end of 2026, undercutting the cost of entry as Robinhood tries to pull volume from offshore venues.
  • More than 150,000 customers have already opened agentic trading accounts since Robinhood first let outside AI agents connect in May, generating close to 30 million tool calls a day.
  • Both products are still rolling out: Robinhood Agents is “coming soon” and perps are due within months, according to CoinDesk.

An Agent That Trades So Customers Don’t Have To

Robinhood Agents removes the technical barrier that limited its earlier automated-trading product to a niche of tech-savvy users. Customers will be able to name an agent, open a dedicated agentic account for it, choose an AI model, and set spending limits, all without connecting outside infrastructure themselves, according to Unchained. CoinDesk’s coverage adds that models will come from both OpenAI and Anthropic, and that OpenAI’s GPT-Luna model will be free to use through the end of the year.

The company is drawing a sharp line between a chatbot and an agent: a chatbot answers questions, while an agent takes action, buying and selling within the limits a customer sets, according to CoinDesk. The company built in guardrails to match: an agent can only spend money held in its own account, and manual approval of each trade is on by default, though customers can turn that off. A coming feature called Loops will let a strategy run as a standing instruction around the clock, checking markets and executing trades while a customer sleeps.

Robinhood already has evidence that demand exists. More than 150,000 customers opened agentic trading accounts after the company let outside AI agents connect to its platform in May, and those agents now tap Robinhood’s tools nearly 30 million times a day, the company said. “Whether you’re an expert or are just getting started with AI, you’re at a disadvantage if you’re not using Robinhood,” said Abhishek Fatehpuria, the company’s vice president of product management.

Not every reaction to agentic finance has been enthusiastic. Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok warned Sunday that if households let AI agents automatically shift cash to the highest-paying accounts, banks could lose “a large share of the cheap deposits they rely on to make loans,” according to CoinDesk. CoinDesk also flagged a trading-specific risk: if thousands of agents running similar models on similar data pile into the same trades at once, a small market move could turn sharp, though it noted that risk remains largely theoretical while the technology is still new.

Perps Route Leverage Through Bitstamp

Robinhood will offer crypto perpetual futures to eligible U.S. customers through Bitstamp, the exchange it acquired last year, rather than building the product from scratch. Perpetual futures never expire and account for the bulk of crypto trading, with daily volume topping $200 billion on the mostly offshore exchanges where they currently trade, according to CoinDesk. Robinhood’s version will allow up to 10x leverage on bitcoin and ether and 3x on SOL, XRP, DOGE, ADA, LINK and HYPE, meaning a 10% move against a maximally leveraged bitcoin or ether position can wipe it out.

The pricing is the clearest signal of how Robinhood plans to compete for that volume: just 0.01% per trade through the end of the year, according to CoinDesk. CEO Vlad Tenev framed it as a first for the U.S. market, writing on X that “Robinhood is bringing America its first true perps,” with profit and loss settling every 15 minutes rather than at a fixed expiry, according to The Block. The launch follows a late-May Commodity Futures Trading Commission move that cleared the way for Kalshi to list a bitcoin perpetual and for Coinbase to route U.S. clients to perps listed by its Bermuda affiliate, according to Unchained. Ondo Perps CEO David Wells told The Block he sees a “huge opportunity” in the U.S. perps market, saying “everybody’s looking at the U.S. because there are more opportunities now that are opening up that were just never possible.”

Who Robinhood Is Trying to Beat

Both launches sit inside a broader push to win active traders that also includes weekend stock trading through Bruce ATS, extended options hours, more intraday margin, and earnings-linked contracts from Cboe, according to CoinDesk. That article notes traditional brokers including Charles Schwab, Interactive Brokers and Fidelity have expanded their own trading products to compete for a generation of investors accustomed to markets that never close. “One of our top priorities as a company is to be number one for active traders,” Fatehpuria said. “We’re not focused on one particular asset class over another.” Tenev put the strategy in blunter terms: “We’re making Robinhood the best place in the world for active traders by delivering tools once reserved for hedge funds, big banks, and quant firms.”

What to Watch

Robinhood Agents is described as “coming soon” and perps are due to roll out within the next few months, both still pending broader availability to eligible U.S. customers, according to CoinDesk. Weekend stock trading through Bruce ATS is targeted for early next year, pending regulatory review, according to Unchained and The Block. The 0.01% perps fee is explicitly framed as a through-year-end promotion, which leaves open what Robinhood charges once the introductory pricing expires.

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