Robinhood is working on AI trading your crypto in a big change of platform

Robinhood has launched plans to allow eligible US customers to authorize AI agents to trade cryptocurrency for them, expanding automated investing beyond stocks and options.

Robinhood said during Friday’s presentation that the upcoming feature will allow eligible US crypto users to connect external AI agents that can manage trades within user-defined limits. The company did not announce a launch date for the crypto version but said that customers in the United Kingdom will get access after the US rollout.

A Robinhood executive said users will be able to create trading strategies with predefined guardrails instead of continuously monitoring their accounts. According to the company, this feature is designed to allow customers to make their own decisions while retaining control over the rules that AI agents must follow.

Robinhood extends automated AI beyond stocks

The crypto release follows Robinhood’s beta launch of AI-powered accounts for stocks and options traders in late May. During the same presentation, Robinhood said that more than 70,000 agent accounts have already been created through the program, which shows the early demand for automated investment tools.

Robinhood also said the service works with AI models from third-party providers, including Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX’s Grok. Besides investing, the company is extending the same technology to consumer finance by allowing eligible customers to authorize AI agents to complete credit card purchases on their behalf.

During the presentation, Robinhood’s CEO said that automated agents can help retail investors act on information they might otherwise overlook, giving them access to the power that is so common among institutional investors.

Besides Robinhood, several crypto executives have made similar predictions about AI-powered financial activity. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire both said they expect AI agents to be major users of blockchain-based payment systems in the next few years.

Robinhood Chain is gaining traction with the release of AI

The spontaneous announcement comes as Robinhood continues to expand its blockchain infrastructure. The company focuses on the latest crypto developments in real-world assets with tokens and Robinhood Chain, its Ethereum layer-2 network built on Arbitrum.

Johann Kerbrat, Robinhood’s senior vice president and general manager of crypto, said the network processed 17 million transactions from nearly 350,000 wallet addresses during its first week after launching on July 1.

DeFiLlama data also shows the total value of the Robinhood Chain locked has increased to more than $115 million after a 23% increase in 24 hours, while the combined addresses are approaching 200,000. The same data puts the network behind the Ethereum mainnet only in Uniswap’s 24-hour trading volume after daily activity reached nearly $500 million on July 8, following more than $250 million in trading volume accumulated during its first week.

Separately, Token Terminal data shows that the Robinhood Chain has attracted more than 70 million Ether from the bridge during its first week. The analytics platform said that continued growth could make the network “a logical new source of demand for ETH.”

AI-driven blockchain payments are also starting to appear outside of Robinhood. In May, Amazon Web Services integrated Coinbase’s x402 payment protocol into Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, allowing AI agents to settle transactions using USDC. Earlier, in April, crypto wallet startup Oobit introduced a Visa-backed virtual card that allows AI agents to make business purchases using USDT.

However, blockchain payment functionality from AI agents remains limited. Artemis data shows the x402 protocol enabled AI agent processed nearly $2 million in transaction volume during June, suggesting adoption is still in its early stages despite the growing number of product launches.