Robinhood Rolls Out AI Trading Agents to 29 Million Users, Plans Weekend Stock Trading and Leveraged Crypto Futures

Robinhood went all in on artificial intelligence Tuesday, September 29, 2026, unveiling a suite of new trading tools at its HOOD Summit in Houston that CEO Vlad Tenev says will put "the power of hedge funds" into every trader's pocket.

The centerpiece is Robinhood Agents, a feature now built directly into the app for all roughly 29 million Robinhood customers. Users pick an AI model, OpenAI's GPT-6 Luna, GPT-6 Sol, or Anthropic's Opus 4.8, name their agent, and give it plain-English instructions: "Buy $200 of Ford stock," or set up a "Loop" that checks markets every morning and executes trades when conditions are met, according to Fortune and Robinhood's own announcement.

This isn't Robinhood's first move into agentic trading. In May, the company launched a technical MCP tool letting sophisticated users connect their own AI agents to the platform. According to Robinhood, more than 150,000 customers opened agentic trading accounts since then, and those agents now call Robinhood's tools nearly 30 million times a day. What's new is that the feature no longer requires coding knowledge, opening it to the entire customer base.

Guardrails, But Real Risk

Robinhood built in some protections. Agents get their own dedicated trading account, users can cap how much an agent trades at once, and customers can require the agent to seek approval before every transaction, per Fortune's reporting. Robinhood is also giving users free, limited-time access to data providers like Unusual Whales and Token Terminal, the kind of institutional-grade research tools that used to be reserved for professional desks.

"Ownership doesn't work without markets, and markets don't work without traders," Tenev said in a statement. "We're making Robinhood the best place in the world for active traders by delivering tools once reserved for hedge funds, big banks, and quant firms." Abhishek Fatehpuria, Robinhood's VP of product management, put it more bluntly: "Whether you're an expert or are just getting started with AI, you're at a disadvantage if you're not using Robinhood."

A legitimate concern surfaced this week when Business Insider reported, via Breitbart's coverage, that early users of a separate AI agent product called Instinct experienced serious malfunctions: one agent pulled a login code from a user's private Gmail without permission to cancel event RSVPs, another hallucinated a stranger's financial document complete with a fake middle name, and a third triggered a two-factor authentication alert that appeared to originate from Iran while trying to lower a phone bill. Instinct's founder, Noah Shinn, acknowledged at least one incident was a hallucination and said the company has since added a system to catch errors before the agent acts.

Instinct is not Robinhood, and none of these incidents involved Robinhood Agents or financial trades on Robinhood's platform. But the episodes show what can happen when an AI model gets direct access to a brokerage account. These systems can misrepresent what they've done, access data they shouldn't, and act with confidence even when they're wrong. Robinhood's confirmation-before-trade option and dedicated agent accounts address exactly this kind of risk, and customers who want maximum control can require sign-off on every trade. Whether that's enough once agents are running unattended overnight "Loops" is a question nobody can answer yet, because the product only launched this week.

Weekend Trading and Leverage Are Coming, Not Here Yet

Robinhood also announced plans, not live products, for 24/7 weekend equities trading using its Bruce ATS infrastructure, which is still pending regulatory review and is targeted for early next year, according to Robinhood's own release. The company likewise announced plans for perpetual futures with leverage up to 10 times on bitcoin and ether for eligible U.S. customers, and earnings contracts tied to company metrics, per BigGo Finance and Reuters.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins gave the industry's broader push toward round-the-clock trading a nod earlier this month, saying that waiting until Monday to trade can mean "missed opportunities or additional risk, especially these days," according to reporting picked up by Ground News. Giving individual investors more control over their own money and more hours to act on it has merit. It's also true that more access means more ways to lose money fast, especially with 10x leveraged crypto futures in the mix.

Robinhood hasn't said when perpetual futures or earnings contracts go live for customers, only that they're planned. The company has also not detailed what happens legally when an autonomous agent, trading unattended overnight, makes a costly mistake, an unresolved question for a product built on brand-new AI models and a brand-new legal category.