Robinhood announces AI agent for customers that trades around the clock, plus 10x crypto perps

"Whether you're an expert or are just getting started with AI, you're at a disadvantage if you're not using Robinhood," said Abhishek Fatehpuria, Robinhood's vice president of product management.

There are guardrails. An agent can only touch the money in its own account. Customers must approve each trade by default, although they can switch that off.

Robinhood is also bringing perpetual futures, a hugely popular crypto product, to eligible U.S. customers inside its app.

Perpetual futures, or perps, are bets on crypto prices that never expire. They trade mostly on offshore exchanges and account for the bulk of crypto trading, with daily volume topping $200 billion.

Traders post a deposit, called margin, and the exchange lets them control a position several times its size. They can bet on prices rising or falling. Robinhood will allow up to 10x leverage on bitcoin and ether, and 3x on SOL, XRP, DOGE, ADA, LINK and HYPE. That means a 10% move against a 10x position can wipe it out.

Robinhood will offer perps through Bitstamp, the crypto exchange it acquired last year, and charge just 0.01% per trade through the end of the year.

Together, the two launches show Robinhood wants to be where active traders are, with leverage on tap and an AI that can place bets at 2 a.m.