Robinhood has over 150,000 people opening AI trading accounts, CEO envisions bringing retail strategies into exchange data centers.

Beating AI News Flash: In May of this year, Robinhood allowed users to connect third-party AI Agents via MCP for trading, and at the end of September announced the direct integration of Agents into the App. At that time, more than 150,000 customers had already opened dedicated trading accounts. CEO Vlad Tenev predicted in a recent interview that a large portion of retail trading in the future will be initiated by AI. Agents can monitor the market around the clock and handle trading across different assets such as stocks, options, and cryptocurrencies, but most funds may still be held for the long term.

Tenev also proposed a bolder idea: allowing retail investors to deploy trading strategies on servers near exchanges. Wall Street high-frequency trading firms have long placed servers close to exchange matching systems to minimize order latency. He hopes ordinary investors can also use this kind of infrastructure without needing to understand data centers and network engineering. However, Robinhood does not currently offer this service and has not announced a launch timeline.

As for how much money AI can use, Robinhood currently still limits it through separate accounts. Agents can view information from a user's other accounts, but can only place orders within the dedicated account, and funds need to be actively transferred in by the user. Tenev acknowledged that technically, direct access to the main account is not difficult, but the company has chosen to gradually open up permissions. The built-in Agent requires users to approve trades one by one by default, and this can be manually turned off; external Agents connected via MCP do not require one-by-one approval by default, and users need to enable approval themselves.