Robinhood Unveils AI Trading Tool Designed to Work Around the Clock

Robinhood users could soon have access to an AI agent capable of trading on their behalf around the clock. However, any losses or risks from those trades remain with the customer rather than the brokerage.

Nasdaq-listed Robinhood is introducing an AI tool that can research markets, develop trading strategies and execute transactions for customers, including when they are away from their devices. The company’s own disclosures warn that the feature carries risks.

The trading platform, which has more than 27 million funded accounts, announced Robinhood Agents on Tuesday during its HOOD Summit in Houston. The feature is integrated into the Robinhood app and allows an AI agent to operate within parameters established by the customer.

Unlike a chatbot, which primarily responds to questions, an AI agent can perform tasks. In Robinhood’s case, that means the agent can buy and sell assets on a customer’s behalf according to the permissions and limits they establish.

The launch brings automated trading, traditionally associated with hedge funds and quantitative trading firms, to individual investors.

The new offering expands on Robinhood’s May launch, which allowed more technically experienced customers to connect their own AI agents to their accounts. Robinhood said more than 150,000 customers have opened agentic trading accounts since then, with those agents now accessing Robinhood’s tools nearly 30 million times each day.

With the latest feature, customers can select and authorize an AI agent directly.

“Agentic accounts come with trade approvals settings which you can configure to allow automated trade execution. With approvals on, your agent cannot place an order until you approve it. You can turn trade approvals off, and if you do, your agent can place orders without asking you to confirm each one,” the company said in its announcement.

Robinhood is also preparing a feature called Loops, which converts a trading strategy into an ongoing instruction that an AI agent can execute repeatedly. An agent could, for example, review markets each morning and trade when specified conditions are met, or continue operating overnight while the customer is asleep. Robinhood said Loops is coming soon.

The move reflects a wider push toward AI agents capable of handling financial tasks. Meta’s Muse assistant can already access users’ bank balances and investments, while x402, a payments protocol developed by Coinbase, enables agents to make payments for services using stablecoins.

Customers remain responsible for the risk

Robinhood’s disclosures make clear that customers, rather than the company, are responsible for the risks associated with AI-driven trades.

Customers “assume all risk for trades executed by AI agents and for any use of your data by third-party LLM providers,” Robinhood said. The company also stated that it “does not control, supervise, monitor, recommend, or audit agents.”

The risk disclosure is particularly relevant to Loops because the feature allows strategies to run continuously. Once activated, Loops “may place, modify, or cancel trades in your account automatically, without prompting you for approval on each transaction – including while you’re asleep, away from your device, or otherwise not monitoring the market.”

The system will execute the customer’s instructions “exactly as configured, including during periods of market volatility.”

Robinhood does not guarantee how Loops will perform under particular market conditions and said automated trading carries risks similar to manual trading. Customers can disable the feature at any time, but trades that Loops has already executed will not automatically be reversed.

Robinhood’s warnings focus largely on the risks facing individual accounts. Broader concerns have also emerged around what could happen if large numbers of AI agents begin trading simultaneously.

Concerns extend beyond individual accounts

Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden warned in June that autonomous AI agents could “amplify volatility in stress” and potentially trigger a “market meltdown.” She also said existing financial regulation was not designed for agentic systems.

One concern is herding, in which numerous trading agents respond to the same news in similar ways at the same time. Such behavior could potentially turn a relatively small market movement into a much sharper one.

Research from Wharton and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology also found that AI trading agents in a simulated environment could collude with one another and manipulate prices to generate collective profits, despite having no explicit communication channel. The researchers found that agents could maintain above-market profits without communication, agreement or intent, adding another challenge for regulators.

These broader risks remain largely theoretical as the technology is still relatively new and adoption remains limited. The regulatory warnings and academic research concern AI trading more generally and do not specifically establish that Robinhood’s agents exhibit the same behavior.

Still, the findings highlight that automated, agent-based trading introduces risks beyond the convenience of allowing software to trade without continuous human involvement.

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