Robinhood CEO Predicts AI Agents Will Soon Match Human Traders' Capabilities

AI agents will soon have the ability to match the capabilities of human traders, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev predicts.

The power of agentic technology — AI that can carry out tasks for users — has been touted as potentially transformational by many in the tech sector, with industry giants including OpenAI and Anthropic racing to develop such products.

Robinhood unveiled tools in May that allow AI agents to trade stocks and make purchases on users' behalf.

"The idea behind agentic trading…[is] every capability a human can do will be available to an AI agent," Tenev told CNBC's Karen Tso on Thursday.

"I was doing programmatic trading as an institutional player before starting Robinhood, and what you don't realize is a large portion of trades are already automated and AI powered."

"But that type of intelligence and complexity has been out of reach from everyday people," he added.

"The end state of agentic trading at Robinhood is to give the everyday person access to the same tools, the same computation, the same power that institutional investors in high-frequency trading firms have been enjoying for several decades."

On Wednesday, Robinhood said it would launch crypto trading in the U.K. as it expanded its offering in Europe.

Shares of Robinhood were up around 2% in Thursday premarket trading after an 8% pop on Wednesday, taking the group's market cap $98 billion at close. Shares are down around 5% in 2026.

In April, Robinhood missed expectations ⁠for first-quarter profit as crypto-driven market volatility weighed on trading ⁠activity. Market conditions have since improved, with easing Middle East tensions and strong equity markets supporting retail trading activity.

That same month, Robinhood announced it would act as a broker and trustee for the yet-to-be-released Trump Accounts, in partnership with U.S. Treasury and BNY Mellon.

"The goal is to make this the best consumer product that the government's ever been associated with," said Tenev.

Robinhood serves nearly 28 million customers across 38 countries and three continents, the company said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Robinhood cut 10% of its workforce as it looked to operate more efficiently.

"Robinhood's ‌business has never been stronger," ⁠Tenev said in a note to employees shared on social media platform X.

"We cannot default to operating as a heavily-layered organization. We must be a lean, hyper-focused team," he ‌added.