Artificial intelligence has steadily embedded itself into financial services over the past decade—first as a chatbot answering balance inquiries, then as a tool for portfolio analysis and market research. Now, a growing number of fintechs are taking a more decisive step: giving AI the keys to actually execute trades. Agentic trading, in which an AI acts autonomously on a user’s behalf to monitor markets and place orders, is quickly becoming a standard offering. What was once the exclusive domain of institutional quant desks is being packaged for everyday investors, and the race among fintechs to lead this transition is already underway.
Public leads the way as the world’s first agentic brokerage
Public became the first brokerage to formally embrace the term “Agentic Brokerage” with its March 2026 release of AI Agents. Rather than manually entering orders, investors can now describe a strategy in plain language and let an Agent act on it—monitoring conditions in real time and executing trades as defined. The feature supports a range of portfolio workflows, allowing users to automate trading strategies, market monitoring, money movement and more. Investors retain full visibility into their Agents’ activity through trading histories and detailed action logs, and can pause, stop, or edit any workflow at any time. Public’s agents operate entirely within the firm’s own platform infrastructure, though availability is currently limited to the desktop experience, with mobile rollout planned.
Robinhood and eToro let users bring their own AI agent
Robinhood’s Agentic Accounts feature takes a similarly consumer-oriented approach, leaning into the straightforward, approachable design philosophy that has defined the platform since its launch. Users connect a third-party AI agent to a dedicated Robinhood Agentic Account, fund it with a separate budget reserved for agent trades, and let the agent analyze markets and place orders, with activity and performance visible directly in the user’s account. CI’s own review of the feature found that Claude, once connected, can build portfolios by walking users through a questionnaire on their investing preferences, retrieve account information, place single-asset trades, and provide real-time market data and stock financials. The platform also presents an explicit permissions confirmation screen before the agent gains access, allowing users to set individual tool-level permissions and keeps agent trades in a dedicated account separate from a user’s personal holdings. At launch, connected AI platforms are limited to equity trading, with Robinhood signaling that additional asset classes and functionality will roll out as the feature exits beta.
eToro’s Agent Portfolios follow the same third-party agent model but target a more technically ambitious audience. Users connect a custom agent to a dedicated sub-portfolio via a scoped API key—with a minimum investment of $200—and can build custom strategies ranging from scheduled rebalancing to signal-reactive trading based on earnings releases or macro indicators.
Gemini brings agentic trading to a regulated crypto exchange
On the crypto side, Gemini entered the space with Agentic Trading in April 2026. In a similar fashion, the firm’s Agentic Trading feature allows users to connect third-party AI services for crypto account tasks, such as placing trades, monitor markets, manage risk, execute strategies automatically and more without manual intervention. The firm also introduced prebuilt “Trading Skills,” modular functions for tasks like pulling real-time market data, finding bid-ask spreads, and retrieving historical candlestick data—lowering the barrier to entry for traders who aren’t building from scratch.
The benefits of agentic trading are compelling. For everyday investors who have long had strategies in their heads but lacked the time or discipline to execute them consistently, AI agents offer a powerful solution to the gap between intent and action. Automation removes the emotional component of investing—no panic selling, no hesitation—and allows strategies to operate around the clock without requiring users to be glued to a screen. For the fintechs themselves, agentic features represent a meaningful differentiator in an increasingly crowded market, deepening engagement and potentially expanding their appeal to younger, tech-forward demographics already accustomed to AI-assisted tools. That said, the risks are real and deserve serious consideration. Autonomous trading systems that make mistakes—or operate as intended but under unexpected market conditions—can generate losses quickly. The convenience of automation may give some investors a false sense of security, particularly those who lack the technical sophistication to fully understand what their agents are doing.
On the traditional financial institution front, the emergence of agentic trading tools at fintechs like Public, Robinhood, eToro, and Gemini is a signal worth watching closely. Though still a relatively new feature, the underlying infrastructure is developing rapidly. As agentic trading gains increased adoption, it could reshape what users expect from any investing platform, raising the bar not just for fintechs but for the incumbents competing with them.
For in-depth analysis of how fintechs are evolving their digital platforms, check out CI’s Fintech Monitor. And visit our Insights section for the latest across financial services and healthcare. Interested in how firms are deploying AI in financial services? Learn more about our new special report.
Sherry Chow
Sherry Chow is an analyst on CI's Fintech and Mobile Finance teams.