MW Here's how AI will help investors, according to Robinhood's CEO

By Gordon Gottsegen

The retail brokerage is expanding quickly into AI

Who are Robinhood's biggest competitors? It's not the other popular retail brokerage firms like Schwab $(SCHW)$ or Interactive Brokers $(IBKR)$, at least according to Chief Executive Vlad Tenev.

"I think the real competitors are the companies that we compete with for talent, at the end of the day, because that's who's taking up my mind share," Tenev said in an interview with MarketWatch. "The companies that we think about a lot are the AI companies. That's who we compete with for talent."

That's important because AI is set to seep into all aspects of trading and investing, Tenev said.

Investing platform Robinhood was on the forefront of bringing stock trading to mobile apps. But now that most of the major brokerages have easy-to-use mobile platforms for investors, Tenev said Robinhood (HOOD) is looking at new ways to stay on the cutting edge of technology.

That means leaning into the promise of artificial intelligence.

Tenev foresees a few ways that AI can benefit investors and the financial firms they do business with.

The first way it can help is by allowing financial firms and brokerages to provide better customer service. Tenev said that Robinhood has already incorporated AI into its customer-support channels, which means that it can be more efficient in addressing customers' concerns.

"[AI] is doing pretty complex, intricate things, like it will refund your [Robinhood] Gold subscriber fee - it's doing more and more actions on behalf of the user," Tenev said.

But serving customers goes beyond customer support. Tenev said that AI can also be used to take care of more of the administrative work that financial advisers do, and allow advisers to do what they do best - establishing a relationship with clients.

'[O]ur pitch to them is that they all want AI because they want to spend more time on the golf course with their clients and less time doing the administration.'Vlad Tenev, Robinhood CEO

"We're going to create a marketplace of human advisers. And our pitch to them is that they all want AI because they want to spend more time on the golf course with their clients and less time doing the administration," Tenev said. "And if they can serve 10,000 customers rather than 100, that's a huge thing for them."

Read more: What AI can - and can't - do for investors right now

Beyond helping financial firms manage their investor clients, AI can also help investors who prefer to be more self-directed. AI is good at coding and it's good at spotting technical trends in price movements. These two things can make AI a useful tool for active traders who rely on algorithmic trading or technical analysis.

"A lot of the active traders are writing code ... to generate indicators and custom scripts," Tenev said. "I think there's an AI experience that is going to make all that easier. We've been thinking about that problem, too. So I think AI will permeate every product, including the active trading products."

Robinhood announced Robinhood Cortex, its designated AI investing product, in March. Cortex is expected to roll out to Robinhood customers later this year.

-Gordon Gottsegen

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June 25, 2025 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT)

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