Robinhood bets on round-the-clock trading and AI agents that never sleep

Robinhood Markets, the US online broker, is to let customers trade stocks around the clock and hand their decisions to AI agents, as it chases the most active end of the retail market.

Chief executive Vlad Tenev told CNBC's Squawk Box on Wednesday that most markets went electronic about 20 years ago, and that algorithms now drive much of the volume on exchanges.

Human traders' strategies still have a role, he said, but agents open up what he called "a new capability frontier".

The products were unveiled on Tuesday evening at the company's HOOD Summit in Houston, Texas.

Agents that trade for you

The headline launch is Robinhood Agents, an AI tool built into the app that lets customers set up bots to form strategies, research markets and place trades on their behalf within limits they set.

It builds on a May launch that let users connect their own third-party AI agents through Robinhood's Model Context Protocol servers, the technical plumbing that lets AI tools talk to other software.

Robinhood said more than 150,000 customers have opened agentic trading accounts since then, with agents using its tools nearly 30 million times a day.

Customers will be able to use models from Anthropic and OpenAI, and Robinhood will charge for usage.

A companion service, Agent Apps, will feed the bots institutional-grade data from 11 third-party providers.

A forthcoming feature called Loops will let an agent run a recurring strategy automatically, even outside regular market hours.

Robinhood warns that once Loops is switched on, it may place, change or cancel trades without asking the customer to approve each one.

Stocks on Saturdays

Pending regulatory review, customers will be able to trade a selection of US stocks 24/7, including weekends, from next year.

The service extends the 24-hour market Robinhood launched in 2023, which currently runs from 8pm on Sunday to 8pm on Friday, US Eastern time.

Weekend trades will run through Bruce ATS, an alternative trading system, meaning a private venue that matches buyers and sellers outside the main exchanges.

Leverage on crypto

Eligible US customers will also get crypto perpetual futures, contracts that track a coin's price without ever expiring and without the trader owning the coin.

Leverage will run up to 10 times on bitcoin and ether and three times on tokens including SOL, XRP, DOGE, ADA, LINK and HYPE.

Tenev said on X that profits and losses would be settled every 15 minutes.

Robinhood is also adding earnings contracts, which let customers bet on companies' reported figures, to its prediction markets section.

Rivals on both flanks

The push puts Robinhood in closer competition with Coinbase, the crypto exchange that has moved into derivatives, and Charles Schwab, which added 24/7 trading in some crypto futures on its thinkorswim platform this year.

Deutsche Bank kept its buy rating on the stock, saying the new products will take time to scale but could increase engagement and Robinhood's share of customers' trading.

The launches follow a record second quarter, when net revenue rose 32% to $1.31 billion.

Event contracts revenue grew more than tenfold to $156 million in that quarter, while crypto revenue fell 38% to $100 million.