Robinhood once again looks to be poised to disrupt the brokerage industry. Just as the Silicon Valley firm brought about the era of zero-commission trading at the end of the previous decade, it is currently introducing a slew of new features, products and platforms that could reshape the industry anew.
Robinhood is engaged in an array of moves perhaps unprecedented in size and scope. The firm is launching products and instituting significant innovations covering AI, banking, advanced trading, prediction markets, venture capital, and social investing. Some of these moves were announced at the firm’s Hood Summit 2025 at the beginning of September, while others have been introduced piecemeal over the past few months.
Robinhood Cortex
This summer, Robinhood distinguished itself among our 21-firm brokerage coverage set as the first firm to integrate generative AI into its investment research experience in a significant manner when it began rolling out Robinhood Cortex. Billed as an encompassing investing assistant, its first feature—Digests—represents a meaningful development as it employs generative AI to provide stock price movement explanations. Digests appears on quote screens, reviewing breaking news, analyst reports, technicals, and proprietary data to deliver simple summaries. American clients must be Gold members to access the insights.
Since the release of Digests, the firm has expanded its Cortex AI tools, adding several notable features to its Robinhood Legends active trader platform. A new scanner widget allows clients to have Cortex monitor the market for specific trends and clients can now write custom indicators via natural language prompts.
Robinhood Banking
Robinhood is rolling out a private banking offering this fall that will include traditional checking and savings accounts along with more premium features, such as estate planning and tax advice. It will also offer some unique capabilities, like cash delivery, as well as luxury perks. The product—which will be exclusively available to Robinhood Gold members—serves as a fundamental expansion of the firm’s consumer finance footprint, far beyond its current Robinhood Gold Card credit card. The existing Robinhood Credit Card app will be transformed into a comprehensive banking app.
Prediction Markets
In Late August, the firm began offering predictions markets for college and professional football through a partnership with predication market exchange Kalshi. Given the popularity of sports gambling, particularly football, this marks a significant expansion into a line of business that no other coverage set firm offers. (Outside the coverage set, Interactive Brokers features a robust prediction market.)
Robinhood introduced its prediction market on a very limited basis at the end of last year when it allowed clients to trade on the outcome of the presidential election. It has since expanded the market to include other sports as well as other topics, such as culture, economics and finance. Prior to supporting football contracts, the firm had already cleared more than 2 billion contracts.
Robinhood Social
Robinhood Social is a community platform the firm will launch by invitation to select U.S. clients early next year, with broader availability to follow. While certain startup brokerages, most notably Public.com, offer a social investing component, Robinhood will be the first firm within our 21-firm coverage set to do so. Embedded within the firm’s mobile app, it will allow clients to follow and interact with other traders, displaying live trades and including a profile element that captures users’ P&L data and trade histories. Clients will also be able to track notable investors who are not on the platform, like hedge funds and politicians.
Robinhood Ventures
In September, Robinhood announced the launch of a publicly traded closed-end fund—Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI)—that will serve to give retail investors exposure to leading private companies across a variety of sectors. With private markets having traditionally been closed off to mass retail investors, Robinhood is positioning the venture fund as a continuation of its mission to democratize finance. The firm notes that the number of publicly traded companies has fallen from 7,000 in 2000 to 4,000 in 2024, while private company valuations in the United States now exceed $10 trillion. Other brokerage firms offer private market investment products, but they require significant account balances of at least $5 million in most cases.
Robinhood Legend
Introduced in October 2024, the firm’s web-based Robinhood Legend active trading platform has been a major focus for the company over the course of the past year. Incumbent active trading platforms like Charles Schwab’s thinkorswim or Fidelity’s Active Trader Pro still easily outpace Legend in terms of capabilities. Yet, Robinhood has iteratively expanded Legend’s offerings, paying special attention to developing features that enhance ease of use, in addition to the standout AI features it recently implemented that are discussed above.
A recently announced device linking feature will allow clients to use the mobile app as an additional screen when trading on the web platform. The firm also rolled out a futures trading offering and an improved options chain that allows clients to click and drag strategies to different strike prices. Additionally, the firm announced plans to begin offering short selling on the platform (and the mobile app) in the near future.
Robinhood Strategies
Expanding the timeframe slightly, Robinhood launched a robo advisor product—Robinhood Strategies—in late March. The robo offers a portfolio of ETFs for those investing less than $500 and a mix of individual stocks and ETFs for accounts over that balance threshold. The move represents the firm’s entry into a common vertical for coverage set firms.
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Sam Marlowe
Sam Marlowe is a Senior Analyst on CI's brokerage team.