Robinhood Introduces In-App AI Trading Agents With Trade Approval On by Default

Robinhood is bringing AI agents inside its app to research markets, build strategies and place trades with customer funds. Announced September 29 at HOOD Summit in Houston, Robinhood Agents will arrive with manual trade approval switched on by default—but customers can change that setting. The company also outlined plans for weekend stock trading and crypto perpetual futures.

The agents and their companion data subscriptions are coming soon to eligible U.S. customers, Robinhood says. There is no exact launch date. Weekend equities trading is targeted for early 2027, pending regulatory review, while perpetual futures are expected in the coming months. Those are separate rollout schedules within the same active-trading announcement, not features all becoming available at once.

A separate account, not a separate app

Robinhood already lets customers connect outside AI agents to its trading tools. That service launched in May; the new experience puts agent creation and interaction directly in the brokerage app. Robinhood says more than 150,000 customers have opened agentic trading accounts since May, and agents now use its tools almost 30 million times daily. Those figures measure accounts and tool use, not investment returns.

Setup involves naming an agent, opening a dedicated agentic account and choosing a model from several AI labs, including OpenAI. The agent trades within the strategy and limits the customer sets. Its access to money is restricted to that dedicated account, rather than all the customer’s funds. The approval setting appears during setup and can be adjusted later.

A planned feature called Loops would turn a strategy into a recurring instruction. Robinhood gives examples of checking the market each morning and trading when conditions are met, or running an overnight strategy while the customer sleeps. Customers can turn a Loop off whenever they choose. Loops are still coming soon; the announcement does not make recurring, around-the-clock execution an available feature today.

Data subscriptions feed the agent

The agents will have access to portfolio information and dozens of market-data sources through Robinhood’s existing Trading MCP, a connection layer for AI tools. Agent Apps add paid data and specialized tools from 11 providers. Robinhood says participating apps will arrive at launch or shortly afterward, with a one-month free trial. The range extends beyond conventional stock data:

• Unusual Whales: real-time options data and unusual-activity detection, priced at $30 a month.
• Quiver Quantitative: congressional trading and corporate lobbying information, priced at $10 a month.
• Visual Crossing: weather forecasts to analyze supply-chain risks and price disruptions, priced at $5 a month.

Weekend access still needs regulatory review

Robinhood’s existing extended stock-trading service, launched in 2023, runs from Sunday at 8 p.m. ET through Friday at 8 p.m. ET. The proposed weekend service would close that gap for a selected group of stocks and exchange-traded funds, not every U.S. equity. Robinhood says it will cover all account types and use Bruce ATS, an alternative trading system that handles trades outside a traditional exchange.

The planned crypto perpetual futures offer another route to trading without a conventional closing schedule. These contracts provide leveraged exposure without requiring ownership of the underlying cryptocurrency and have no expiration date. Robinhood says eligible U.S. customers will be able to take long or short positions across eight cryptocurrencies, with up to 10 times leverage on bitcoin and ether and three times on the others.

For those contracts, Robinhood says customers can set stop-loss and take-profit orders, monitor the price at which a position would be liquidated and receive risk alerts. Its shares rose 3% in early Wednesday trading following the summit news, CNBC reported. The market reaction came before the announced agents, weekend equities access and perpetual futures had completed their planned rollouts.