Robinhood hands crypto the aux cord: AI agents to trade for you, no babysitting required 🎧

Robinhood said eligible US-based customers will "soon" be able to connect third-party AI agents to execute crypto trades on their behalf, expanding a product the company first rolled out to equities and options traders in May. "You can work with an agent to create a strategy with specific guardrails and not need to be constantly monitoring your account," a Robinhood executive said during a presentation on Friday. The company did not name a launch date and said UK customers would follow.

The push builds on Robinhood's broader crypto strategy, which has centered on real-world asset tokenization and the Ethereum layer-2 Robinhood Chain, launched earlier this month. Johann Kerbrat, senior vice president and general manager of crypto at Robinhood, said the new blockchain processed 17 million transactions from nearly 350,000 wallet addresses in its first week. Since late May, more than 70,000 agentic accounts have been created by Robinhood equities and options traders using a beta version of the offering.

Robinhood pitches the feature as a way to give retail investors access to institutional-grade data. "This is another big step towards giving retail investors every advantage that institutions have enjoyed for decades," the executive said during the presentation. The agentic accounts are offered through third-party AI providers including Anthropic, OpenAI and Grok, and the company is also enabling eligible users to authorize AI agents to make credit card purchases on their behalf.

The move aligns with broader industry predictions from executives including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, who have said AI agents will become dominant users of blockchain payments in coming years. In May, Amazon Web Services integrated Coinbase's x402 payments protocol into Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, allowing agents to transact in the USDC ($USDC) stablecoin. In April, crypto wallet startup Oobit launched a Visa-supported virtual card enabling AI agents to make online purchases in USDt ($USDT) on behalf of businesses.

Adoption of agent-driven stablecoin spending remains modest. Artemis data shows only $2 million in transaction volume was facilitated through the AI agent-supplied protocol layer, indicating that infrastructure is being built faster than it is currently being used.