Robinhood Markets NASDAQ: HOOD CFO Shiv Verma said the company is expanding its artificial intelligence efforts with newly announced “agentic” trading and commerce tools, while continuing to prioritize asset growth, international expansion and product diversification.
Speaking at an investor conference, Verma said Robinhood announced two agentic products: agentic trading and agentic commerce. The trading product allows users to create a separate agentic account and connect it through an MCP to large language model tools such as Claude Code or Codex. Verma said the product is currently aimed at AI-native users and developers rather than novice investors.
“This is not in the app,” Verma said. “You have to actually physically connect through the MCP.” He added that Robinhood expects to roll out more agentic features later this year for less technical users.
Verma said early uses have ranged from executing a specific stock trade to screening companies based on growth and earnings criteria or building portfolios based on risk preferences. The commerce product is tied to Robinhood’s credit card platform and lets users create virtual cards with spending limits for agents to complete purchases or reservations.
AI Efforts Extend Across Employees and Customers
Verma said Robinhood’s broader AI strategy is split between tools for employees and tools for customers. On the internal side, he said the company started with customer service and software development, noting that about 75% of customer service tickets are answered through AI.
He also said Robinhood has cited “over nine figures” of software development savings and that its code commit velocity is up 50% since the start of last year. Verma attributed the productivity gains to early adoption of AI tools, training and Robinhood’s engineering-focused culture.
“We are a technology company that happens to be in financial services,” Verma said.
Verma said Robinhood is expanding AI usage beyond developers. He described an internal marketing test in which a team built an ad entirely with AI tools in about four hours, then generated dozens of variations for testing.
Platform Assets, Gold and Customer Growth
Verma said Robinhood has about $350 billion in platform assets, up from the $300 billion figure referenced by the moderator. He said the company still sees a large opportunity in U.S. brokerage, retirement and financial advice markets.
Robinhood’s average account size is now about $12,000, compared with roughly $2,000 when Verma joined the company, he said. He added that the company’s median customer is now 36 years old, compared with an average customer age of 28 when he joined.
Verma said the company is building more products for those customers, including custodial accounts, trust accounts, mortgages, banking, checking and savings. He said Robinhood still believes it can compound net deposits at 20% annually, while also turning more attention to top-of-funnel customer growth.
On Robinhood Gold, Verma said the company views the $5-per-month or $50-per-year membership more as a loyalty product than a subscription product. He said Gold members tend to deposit five times more on average and use more products than non-Gold members.
Verma said roughly 40% to 50% of new customers sign up for Gold, while the total attach rate is about 15% because of Robinhood’s large existing customer base. He said Robinhood is not opposed to raising pricing in the future, but is focused for now on adding more value to the offering.
Trading, Crypto and Prediction Markets
Verma said Robinhood’s crypto take rate declined because of a shift in trading mix, with casual traders stepping back while active and institutional traders remained engaged. He said Robinhood’s tiered crypto pricing is designed to offer more competitive pricing to active traders while monetizing casual traders differently.
For options, Verma said the take rate moved lower because customers shifted from single-name stocks toward ETFs, which have lower spreads. He said April was Robinhood’s second-highest trading month ever and that May was off to a strong start.
On prediction markets, Verma discussed Rothera, Robinhood’s joint venture with Susquehanna. He said Robinhood previously acted as the FCM, onboarding customers while partnering with a third-party exchange, but Rothera gives the company vertical integration through ownership of a DCM exchange.
Verma said Robinhood expects most of its prediction market flow to migrate to its own exchange over time. He also said the company plans to revisit the current $0.02-per-contract pricing structure, with the goal of offering competitive pricing while keeping its take rate intact.
He said more than 1.5 million customers have used event contracts, up from the more than 1 million figure disclosed at earnings. Sports currently accounts for most volumes, but Verma said Robinhood is seeing use cases in weather, financial and other contracts.
Private Markets and International Expansion
Verma said Robinhood’s vision for private markets is to do for private markets what it did for public markets. He cited customer pain points including limited access to private technology companies, lack of daily liquidity, accreditation limits and high fees.
Robinhood Ventures Fund I was launched in a closed-end fund format, which Verma said allows exchange-listed access without accreditation requirements. He said 150,000 customers participated in the IPO and that the fund has a market capitalization of roughly $1.5 billion. He added that Robinhood has confidentially filed with the SEC for Fund II but could not provide more details.
Internationally, Verma said Robinhood is operating brokerage in the U.K., crypto and stock tokens in the EU, and has pending or announced expansion efforts tied to Canada, Indonesia and Singapore. He said Robinhood uses both organic launches and acquisitions, depending on licensing, local teams and speed to market.
Capital Allocation and Regulation
Verma said Robinhood’s capital allocation approach is to invest for growth, use M&A to accelerate speed to market and return excess capital to shareholders. He said the company has announced a $1.5 billion share repurchase program and has bought back about $350 million to date.
He said Robinhood has about $6 billion of cash on its balance sheet and $3 billion to $4 billion of credit lines, which he described as liquidity tools rather than active sources of leverage.
On regulation, Verma said Robinhood supports the Clarity Act but does not view it as existential. He also said the company is focused on tokenization rules in the U.S. and changes to accreditation standards, arguing that access to certain investments should not be tied only to wealth.
“We like to build across different cycles, and different administrations,” Verma said.
About Robinhood Markets NASDAQ: HOOD
Robinhood Markets, Inc NASDAQ: HOOD is a U.S.-based financial services company best known for its mobile-first brokerage platform that aims to "democratize finance for all." Founded in 2013 by Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company built early traction by offering commission-free trading and a simplified user experience that attracted a large base of retail investors.
Robinhood's core products and services include a mobile app and web platform for trading U.S.
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