Robinhood CEO: AI agents will match human traders in capability; crypto UK launch amid 28M-user expansion

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told CNBC on Thursday that agentic AI will soon have the capability to match human traders. The company launched agentic trading tools in May that allow AI agents to trade stocks and make purchases on users' behalf. Tenev framed the end state as giving everyday people access to the same computation and power that institutional investors and high-frequency trading firms have enjoyed for decades, democratizing what was previously locked behind capital barriers.

Robinhood built its agentic tools on the observation that a large portion of institutional trades are already automated and AI-powered—but that intelligence and complexity had been out of reach from retail. "The idea behind agentic trading is every capability a human can do will be available to an AI agent," Tenev said. Separately, Robinhood announced it would launch crypto trading in the UK as it expands its offering in Europe. The company serves nearly 28 million customers across 38 countries and three continents.

For retail investors and AI-native fintech platforms, Robinhood's agentic stance matters because it signals that AI-driven financial agency—not just portfolio analytics or robo-advice—is now a competitive battleground. Robinhood shares are up around 2% in Thursday premarket on the back of Wednesday's 8% pop (crypto UK announcement), valuing the firm at ~$98 billion. The company's market cap is down ~5% year-to-date despite recent strength, reflecting spring's Q1 earnings miss and cost-cutting (10% layoffs in June). Agentic trading platforms now compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and closed-loop fintech stacks for a slice of AI-driven transaction value.