Robinhood CEO 播客详解已发布的 Robinhood Agents 代理交易产品，称已有超10万客户开通

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单集:Robinhood’s CEO on letting AI trade your money
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Vlad, I just got to see Robin Hood agents and have a lot of questions. I think the big thing for me is it's the first time that a lot of people will probably be introduced to the concept of AI making trades on their behalf. And it seems like a big deal for not only you guys, but the industry, AI in general, how people use AI. I'd love to hear from you the genesis of this idea and why you guys decided to do it because you did the MCP thing recently where you know people can use Robin Hood data in their own AI harnesses and and and all of that but this is this feels like bigger. >> Yeah. I guess the the origins of it, the the motivation is that we want to empower traders with all the best tools and we want to put all of the power of a sophisticated hedge fund or algorithmic trading firm in your pocket. Um, the beginning of my business career, I was in algorithmic trading, so I I have a little bit of experience of what that looks like and and what it is. And I think this is um it's it's going to be a long mission that to some degree never ends because the wealthy always find a way to get better stuff which which means our job is never done and and that's part of what makes it very very fun. So the when we started our path uh to making Robin Hood agentic and making this agentic finance category real and and by the way nobody else is really doing this. So it's sort of like we're wandering through the fog and iterating on the infrastructure and the product at the same time. So the first version of it which we launched with our Robin Hood MCP uh Robin Hood for agents uh earlier this year had two components. One was for trading the other was an agentic credit card. And for trading it started in a separate account. So it's very cabined off. You have to affirmatively move money from either your bank or from another one of your accounts to your Aentic account. So it's separate from your retirement, separate from your main Robin Hood account. At first it could only trade equities without margin. So unlevered uh cash settled equities and then over time because we wanted to start light and kind of figure out how customers would use it and what they wanted and and so over time we've expanded assets. Now you can do options now you can do crypto. We've added limited margin capabilities as well. Um and what we found was f first off customers love it. We have over a 100,000 customers that uh have actually onboarded onto our agentic trading offering. Uh and as we look at the metrics, it's like continually and steadily increasing. Um especially when we add new capabilities and we we unlock things like limited margin. And so the the trajectory and the retention has been really really good. what people uh there there's a couple of things that are clear next steps that we want to improve that have been just adding a little bit of friction. One is not a lot of people want to use cloud code or codeex and you know in in our circles we're a little bit more techsavvy probably know a lot of people using claude code and codecs but for your average individual it's a little bit too complex. It's still kind of a developer tool for computer programmers and the friction of going from your claude connecting it to an MCP linking it to Robin Hood and having to like monitor in a different place where you're managing your strategy is not ideal. So that's one problem that we fixed with um with with Robin Hood agents. The second problem is that a lot of times the general models when when you plug in an MCP uh they don't want to trade. They're not comfortable with it. They don't see the you know trading traces in their training data. They're not built for it. And so we've spent a lot of work and and this is the part that I think will continue to make the models very very good at using our tools being aware of what Robin Hood can do and how best to take advantage of the the huge ecosystem and and actually iterate to make it make it not just want to trade but be really really good at everything around it. And so uh that that's the big step in Robin Hood for Robin Hood agents. We're bringing it into your app, making it so you can manage it in one place and and really kind of giving you an integrated experience for agentic trading. And it's just the beginning. You imagine more asset classes, more capabilities, everything that you should be able everything that you do as an individual on Robin Hood should be accessible to your agent. And over time, you know, we we want to systematically go through everything that an extremely sophisticated algorithmic trading firm or hedge fund would have access to and and give that to our customers through Robin Hood. And that means improvements on performance and latency. >> Um, you know, a lot of these high frequency firms, they compete over who gets to be the first port in the switch in the data center where where the exchange or market maker is, right? Um so so the yeah it goes quite deep. So more work on the performance and latency side which we've been making incredible progress. More work on research and adding tools. Um, agent apps is a new thing where we can actually link to thirdparty developers who provide tools for our agents, help them monetize and and give that capability to users and uh more more data and more integration with the broader Robin Hood ecosystem. So yeah, we we see a world where actually the north star is our customers should have an advantage over the hedge fund and the algorithmic trading firm and there's just a endless amount of work uh to to get to that point. >> And for people who haven't used it yet or seen it, I mean it basically takes 60 seconds to set up. You name your agent, pick your model, decide if you want to have trade approvals on for the agent, which I think is important. You guys are making it opt in for the experience so that people I think can just get used to it because it's a it's going to be a new concept for a lot of people, especially the average Robin Hood user, like you said, they don't know about all these sophisticated tools and um data sources that professional traders have access to. you. We we put a lot of guard rails in at the beginning and and some customers actually say, "Hey, I wanted to have access to everything." But at this point, we still want to make it to be a affirmative decision. Do you want it to be autonomous or do you want to approve everything? Well, by default, we'll make you approve everything, but we'll have a path if you want to try autonomous. And then the fact that it's in a separate account as well um makes it so that you have to make an affirmative decision for it to trade your your money. It won't just, >> you know, go rogue and do that. So we spent a lot of time thinking through the tradeoffs and I think we have a good base from which we can continue to iterate and and to lead this new market which I think will be a a really big market. >> This episode is brought to you by Mercury AI native banking that's loved by more than 300,000 entrepreneurs including me. Visit mercury.com to learn more. Mercury is a fintech not a bank. Check the show notes for details. This episode is also brought to you by Jira by Atlassian, where teams and agents get the context, coordination, and control to move work forward. Try it free at jira.com. That's ji.com. Thanks also to Granola, the AI notepad for people in back-toback meetings. It works everywhere you do and lets you focus on what matters. Try it at granola.ai/sources and use the code sources for 3 months off. The separate account piece. Um, did you want it to be one account? Did you have to do separate account for regulatory reasons or privacy reasons? Do you see it ever being one account, the AI and you in your in your account? >> I think that I mean it would be very easy for us to link it to to your main account. Uh, I think part of the reason we wanted to do it is just to start small and to make sure that, you know, if if uh if we do get feedback from customers, we sort of tiptoe into the experience. A lot of people have been asking us for putting into the main account or you could imagine like um a flag so that you you could flag and turn on an agent, plug it into an existing account that you have. So yeah, that's something we're thinking about, but I don't think at this point it's uh a limitation of the product. I think a lot of a lot of customers really like being able to move things over and keep it separate. So probably the default being separate account will will continue at least for the time being >> out here in Silicon Valley where we are. We're here at your office in Memo Park. I mean there's whole startups being created to use AI to do autonomous trading, right? And it's it's a really interesting category and something I've been thinking a lot about and the idea of AI managing money for people and not just you know sophisticated people but everyday retail investors and you're doing that now with this. I'm curious like where you think this is going. Are we going to a world where most people have AI make their not only their decisions but their trades, execution, all of that? Have AI do that for them? Do you think that that this is inevitable? >> I think a very large portion of the volume will will be generated by AI agents and I think that's because they don't have a lot of the limitations that we have as human traders. They can be up 24/7, right? They can be multi-asset class simultaneously. So, you know, one one of the things that are challenging for humans using our Robin Hood app directly is you you have to like go to different screens to get different asset classes. You know, the more things we add to the app to some degree, the more work we have to do to make the experience coherent. So for example, we've got we started with stocks and it was very simple stock experience, but then we added options, crypto, now we have futures, prediction markets in overseas and some of our other products. We've got DeFi with Robin Hood chain, decentralized finance products and assets. We've got perpetual futures, banking, you know, retirement advisory. So it's it's a lot of stuff and that complexity is a challenge for humans but for agents it's just more context more opportunity more trade ideas and so you know we started seeing the earliest iterations of Robin Hood agents we see people constructing option strategies right and it's like I have a very specific thing that I want to do trade that I want to put on maybe it's an iron condor or something and you know it's I can tell my agent and it'll it'll take the data, it'll put it together. It makes that really really easy. And that's kind of a automation use case. It's like removing a paper cut. But you imagine we plug it into all assets. We plug it into all data sources and and you'll see the use case is getting more complex. The strategy is getting a lot richer. Um yeah, I see a world where a large portion of the trading volume for an individual investor for for our customer base writ large is generated by AI agents but that doesn't necessarily mean the vast majority of the assets uh are going to be agentically trading. I think I think the vast majority of the assets will probably be, you know, held long-term, but but the trading activity uh will will probably go more and more towards Agentic. >> It's an interesting time, too, because people are getting used to products like Muse, Instinct, etc. making purchases for them aically and using AI to save money, pay for things. So, I feel like your timing is actually pretty good because the average everyday AI user is starting to realize like, oh, I can use AI to interact with my money. >> Yeah. >> In a way, in a way that 6 months ago, no one was really doing. >> I think Yeah. There was there was still that gap of I don't really feel comfortable, >> you know, giving my AI my email or, you know, the the keys to my brokerage account. I think we're we're going through the shift and it happened with other new technologies too. I mean, I remember when the internet first became a big thing and people were very nervous punching their credit card number into a website. >> Yeah, I remember >> didn't feel secure. It was like a a safety concern and it was even it it took probably 10 years before it became clear that it's actually more secure than handing your credit card over at a brickandmortar register. Same with mobile. You know, when we got started with mobile, it was still the the Overton window hadn't shifted to mobile being your default way of managing your finances. It was still people thought of it as it's where I play games or do not serious stuff. So, the idea of my finances being on on my phone seemed sacriiggious almost. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think I think we'll see the same thing here. We're starting to see it. And so we're probably early, but I think I think the time is soon. >> When your team was showing me the demo, I was thinking too, this really gets at the original mission you had for the company, democratizing finance, because AI, those paper cuts you described, u putting on complex trades, all these things. Potentially, a lot more people could be doing more complex things with their money and not even needing to fully understand all the complexities. >> Yeah. The AI could explain it to you. Yeah, >> you know, much better than >> the interface simple. >> Yeah, I mean options trading is a is probably a great example. Options options trading is very difficult >> and you all had I think still do have the best interface in terms of learning options but I got to be honest it still is complex. >> Yeah, particularly if you go into these multileg strategies. I mean we can do what we can to illustrate and say okay well this trade you know you've got limited upside cap downside you know and we'll show that graphically and you know we can generate all those all of those uh visualizations and and make them available to agents as well. What the agents can do is take your intent. It's like hey I want to put on a trade for this stock. I want to cap my downside. I want to have you know unlimited upside. those sorts of things and it'll it'll actually they do a pretty good job of constructing the right legs of the options trade for you. >> I'm I'm curious where you think the edge will be in investing and trading as AI proliferates. I mean, you started this conversation by saying we're always trying to play catch-up with the big guys, trying to get people a leg up. The big guys are always going to be trying to get their edge. Uh >> so this cat and masking feels like it's not stopping anytime soon. Yeah, >> but if we think big picture, a world where everyone's using AI to manage their money, >> I think I think the edge will be always moving, there's not going to be like, oh, everything's still and, you know, the edge is right here, the alpha is right there. I mean, people are always building new products. You know, even us, you look at uh Robin Hood chain, which is our new blockchain that we rolled out >> optimized for real world assets. I mean, as soon as that went live, it surprised us with just a huge amount of developer activity, DEX volume. A lot of the traders um from other chains immediately started bridging over because there were all these new assets they could trade, the stock tokens, but also, you know, some of the memes and and other assets. All all of that was just a new ecosystem. So I think you'll see new ecosystems continue to form new asset classes. You know, a lot of the agentic trading interest has been in prediction markets too where you not only have your typical financial assets but you can trade on real world events, you could trade on Fed decisions, sports, >> um crypto has become very popular. So you'll you'll see new asset classes coming in. And I think the advantage that Robin Hood has is we're one of the few if not the only where you could do all of these things in one place >> with one easily shared balance and you know uniform KYC simple money movement. So for your agent, they can just have access to all these things and then you can have strategies that incorporate multiple assets. And and I think that's where it's going to start to get really interesting cuz that type of complexity, that type of strategy is going to be very very difficult for a human unassisted to to be able to put together. >> So you don't worry about a world where everybody has the same kind of super powerful AI that can trade for them and then there's effectively no edge. >> The edge in anything is is is built by differentiation. if if you're doing the same thing as everyone else, kind of definitionally, you you have no edge. So, you'll have to figure out how to be different. And I think that's been always true for trading. >> It's not as simple as like my AI is better than yours. There's a lot of like product stuff around it. >> I mean, if you have a better AI than other people, I think that would be one form of edge, but yeah, I don't think very many people will be training their own their own AIs. But I mean connecting it to unique pieces of data um we'll have a proliferation of of apps in the agent app store um which which now we have relatively small number but it's going to be open and we're going to be we're going to be adding a lot more. >> Mhm. things in some degree to some degree do get centralized because we have these models that are now looking at everything but also the amount of things we can give them and the m the context and the tools are are increasing as well >> and I want to ask about the agent marketplace but on the model side quickly are you guys doing a lot of post-raining fine-tuning on the big you know open AI anthropic models are you Robin Hood's not going to make its own model for this right >> yeah current currently we're not doing any fine-tuning but we have done that internally uh for for certain models. We've also pre-trained some specialized models >> really >> for for ourselves. Yeah, with with this one we wanted to start with you know the models that our customers would already know and give them some choice for for what to deploy. But yeah, that doesn't mean that I mean you can tell already this uh this product has evolved. So it it's going to look completely different probably 6 to 12 months from now. the marketplace. Is this in the same way you talk about all the other business lines you guys have? Is this the next one? Do you see this being more than just a way to make Robin Hood agents better, but an actual business for the company? >> I do think the vast majority of Robin Hood's business is going to be from transactions and assets. So, just customers performing activities on the platform and bringing their money in and kind of the second order effects there. Um, subscription is uh a bigger and bigger thing for us. I mean, you look at Robin Hood Gold for the main app. That's a multiundred million a year revenue business started from from a small base. We want to make it as as good as possible and create this marketplace where developers and service providers can come in and have an incentive to to plug in their data. Is it going to be as big as the Apple App Store? Uh, I'm I'm not sure. Um, but yeah, I guess I I never try to presuppose and pre-ordain how big each of my businesses will be relative to the other ones. >> It's not like people always ask me, well, what percentage of your business do you want crypto to be? >> I want my crypto business to be the biggest crypto business. I want the equities business to be the biggest equities business. I want them to compete with each other over which one's bigger. Yeah. Like why why would I be like, "Oh, no." Yeah. crypto I want to keep to like seven percent, right? That's that's a really good 7%. Let's just not keep it. Uh >> it's a portfolio. Yeah. Um well, no, but so the marketplace >> it's a portfolio where everything just has to be as big as possible. >> The the marketplace though, I mean, is the business model some kind of take rate or subscription sharing component? How do you because you've got like initially you've got unusual whales in there. You've got some great data sources. What is in it for them except exposure to the Robin Hood user? How complex do you want that to be? Like do you think it stays that simple? >> I think so because whenever you get into like for example it's hard to do a transactionbased or an assetbased um uh revenue share for a couple of reasons. One is a lot of customers don't want that information shared with the apps. you know, you you don't want, you know, the entire marketplace to see how much money you've got in your account. You also don't want them people are very private about their trading strategies. Yeah. >> You're not going to want people like inspecting all of your trades, right? So, >> yeah, one of the benefits we provide is we provide a layer of privacy. People know that people are already comfortable with their trading in Robin Hood because they know we're not just sharing their their trading data with with everyone. So I think subscription is clean and it yeah it doesn't get us into like these messy things of either making sure that the partners have to get regulated or that we don't want customers to feel like their data is is uh is going anywhere they don't want it to go >> of course. Yeah. Is there anything that the big guys are doing the hedge funds etc where you're like the quants all that that you're like man I'm trying to get that in right now to the to the marketplace. Are you are there things that you can tease that people may not know about the edge that these big guys have that you're like I'm I'm I'm going to bring this in. >> I mean a great north star would be uh um and and again I'm not giving you any timeline for for when we would have anything like this. But a lot of the strategies that the big guys have are unlocked by low latency. So you have to be physically proximate to the exchanges and the matching engines and right now Robin Hood doesn't offer that. But you know of course >> my beginnings were as a highfrequency trader and you know I think it's an interesting question to ask ourselves what would it look like? Can we democratize that? Can we actually and we're starting with just making the performance and latency generally better >> um but you know one day can you deploy a trading strategy colloccated with with the exchange um and do that in a very simple way where you know you don't have to be an expert in data centers or networking. You don't have to understand uh >> you know the details of of of that type of infrastructure engineering. But can we can we actually just make that easy for you? >> I'm curious how you're using agents in your personal life for running the company, also managing your money. And I heard from your team you really love loops. >> Yeah, >> you're doing a lot of loops. We could talk about that, but yeah, curious how you're using it and how it's evolved for you these last few months because things are moving so fast right now. >> The first thing I started out with was just writing code. I became an engineer again and you know through that I guess my my northstar is that everyone should have a team of agents that's productive while they sleep. So we should be like a 247 company and not just in aggregate but >> it kind of mirrors the 247 push you're doing on like trading windows and all that. Yeah. >> Each person should be a 247 >> agent manager. your job becomes managing your agents. Make sure they're, you know, wellfed and they're not hungry and they have the context. And, you know, you you ask, "All right, well, what does it take for your agent to be running fully autonomously?" They have to have context. They have to be able to test their work because if they don't have the ability to test their work, eventually they stop and they're like, "All right, I'm done." You know, you you you do the testing for me, human. So it really just requires rethinking our entire infrastructure and making sure everything from uh the continuous integration, continuous deployment, the testing um like that that's all really really good and it can scale and that you know we can actually automate pretty much everything and and I think that the future is all all product development will will be looped in in this way right and and your bottleneck will be how quickly can your changes be tested against live customers and and how quickly are you going to be able to tell is this a good change or or or a bad change that we should throw away. Industrywide software engineering is completely transforming. You're going to see an endto-end automation of product development and infrastructure development. One of the first places you're seeing it is uh is actually AI research. M >> people thought that would be the hardest and the last to go >> because it's just complex work. >> But but really if you think about it >> it's it's pretty neatly sandboxed. I mean AI models there's already a way to test them without having them live. We have eval you have automated eval. experiments are pretty sort of like narrow in some ways like you can run experiments change uh change the AI model deploy a new feature uh retrain it in some cases so so it turns out some of the first work that's being automated is the AI research work and and I think eventually it'll happen with with products too but product work is is a little bit harder because you have to go and get adoption from >> real users they have to test it in the wild and and human adoption and and behavior change changes a little bit more slowly than you know things in the in the pure agent world >> and there's an intuition to products and an art really to it that I think also is going to be hard to replicate by AI >> maybe so I don't know I mean they said AI would be the last to uh art would be the last thing to be uh to be replicated but you know some of the first things you saw right when Chad GPT he launched was stable diffusion. Yeah, you could say make this but in the style of Vincent Van Go, right? And >> it was it was it's pretty good. >> Now again, that doesn't mean that it has the the taste and people kind of get used to things and realize that this is an AI generated image, but um yeah, I think a lot of the design work benefits from AI AI as well. Yeah, I'm really interested to hear your view on the conversation around AI bigger picture and how people feel about it because I was thinking about it's so visceral how people feel about it. They either love it and they're using it and it's improving their businesses and their lives or they hate it. They detest it. They refuse to use it. >> Very polarizing. And the data centers are a problem. There's a lot of problems. And I was thinking about, you know, this concept of of inequality and how it connects to like the Robin Hood mission and, you know, bringing equality to to finance and and democratizing finance. And I wonder if you agree or not that I I'm starting to think a lot of the negativity around AI may actually have to do with inequality. >> Completely agree. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why we push so hard for individual investors being able to invest in private companies. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And we have Robin Hood Ventures, which is our U USbased, think of it as uh publicly traded venture funds that are >> listed on on the on the NY. Yeah, we have two two funds that have IPOed. More are coming. >> You just had Cruso on there I saw. And >> yeah, Cruso uh Cruso was Robin Hood Ventures one investment. Robin Hood Ventures fund two is seed and series A stage. >> Wow. >> So fund one is frontier companies that are leading their industries typically late stage. Uh, so Open AI is in there. >> Data Bricks. >> Data Bricks. Exactly. Revolute. So really just top quality latestage names that are hard to get into >> available to mass market audience through a product that >> uh is is traded on the NY like any stock. And and the great thing about it is because we have so many retail customers, >> we provided retail distribution directly. So we went public, we raised capital, the bulk of which came from Robin Hood individual investors and then that capital was invested into these companies. It's an efficient structure, right? There's very very little middle layers and no carry for Robin Hood Ventures Fund. Robin Adventures fund too. We wanted to take it further and do something that nobody's done before, which is seed and series A stage companies, companies nobody's heard of before they become household names, >> which is exciting, but I can say now as a new investor, also very risky. >> Yeah. I mean, the risk is highest in those, but also the potential upside and the opportunity is greatest. And actually, there have been studies, there's a pitchbook study that looked at, and you're an investor, so you probably seen this one. seed investing as an asset class had the highest aggregate returns even accounting for uh a higher rate of company failures than any other any other class. >> The power wall is a beautiful thing. >> Yeah. So, it's interesting. I mean, we solved the problem of individual company failures by diversifying in a in a broad-based basket. And when Robin Hood Ventures Fund 2 went public, we seated the portfolio with 80 companies. So it's it's going to be a large a large a large number of investments and you know we're building the machinery to do this and of course overseas we have tokenization which we've uh demonstrated with our uh tokenizing open AI and SpaceX for our European customers as a gift. And then you know now that the chain is out we're obviously very keen on taking our tokenized stock products uh stock tokens and uh expanding that to to other assets. So yeah you look at AI big problem and you juxtapose it with something like crypto which was available to individual investors from the beginning from the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain. It was like an individual decentralized phenomenon. normal people adopted it before institutions >> became incredibly wealthy from it and yeah >> yeah and now you know you've got crypto army y >> if there's a hint of government overreach the crypto army is like swinging elections right the 2024 election hung on the balance of huge individual support for crypto juxtapose that with AI >> no one has exposure to these >> nobody has exposure why do I want the data center in my backyard if it's just if it's just going to make you know uh these venture capitalist richer, right? Uh yeah, >> it's just expensive, resource consuming, slightly better Google. And if you think of it that way, of course, you're going to hate it. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think uh and yeah, I think that's a big problem with uh people not having skin in the game, not rooting. If if if AI had if there were more individual owners of these AI companies at the earliest stages, they would be defending it because it's it's my AI company. You know, I wanted to do better. I wanted to I wanted to expand and to grow because I benefit and I have skin in the game. So yeah, that's why we care so much about Robin Hood Ventures and and our efforts to get AI companies to even before they go public give individual investors some some skin in the game. And you know, it's exacerbated by the fact that private markets are getting flush with with capital. Yeah. >> And companies feel less of a need to to go public until they're now in in trillion dollar plus valuations. >> AI is only as useful as the context it has. 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Framer is the AI website builder that powers the sources podcast website at podcast.sources.news. Framer brings AI agents into the same canvas where your website is designed, managed, and published so you can move faster without giving up your taste or control. I use Framer to make the Sources podcast website be the destination for everywhere you can find the show. Plus, you can also see recent issues of my newsletter. Start building with agents for free today at framer.com/sources for 30% off a framer pro annual plan. framer.com/sources. Rules and restrictions may apply. >> I'm curious how you're I mean, we just had we had SpaceX, right? But I'm curious how you're thinking about anthropic and open AI and and looking at those coming down the pike. Well, of course, we see an opportunity because we have uh such a large retail customer base that we can very much be the voice of retail uh and and help these companies at each stage in their life cycle. You know, preo with Robin Hood Ventures. Now, we're an underwriter in IPOs, we announced Aura, which is the first IPO that we're underwriting. And then >> I assume that's just the beginning. You want to do a lot more underwriting. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. We intend to be disruptive in the space, too. The problem is too like a lot of these underwriters charge high fees. So >> I think we can be kind of like the >> retail distribution experts. >> How do you break that underwriting cabal really is what it is? >> Yeah. Well, I mean, uh, to be fair, there's some, uh, >> it's important. It's an important job. I mean, I'm not trying to downplay the importance of it, but >> Yeah. Yeah. there there's actually some things that we're not really well positioned to do and we probably won't focus on at least for the foreseeable future. So I don't think we have any particular competitive advantage going and getting uh a bunch of large buyside institutions or sovereign wealth funds to be connected to to the company as investors. So you know like >> Goldman, JP Morgan, all these other guys they have they're great at that. uh that we don't have like uh uh private wealth to nearly the same degree, but what we do have is everyday people and large numbers that love investing in these companies. And so I think we can be the default retail option uh and and we can kind of uh represent retail uh as as a part of the shareholder base. We also have really good data. You know, the >> IPO process has been very very manual. you sit down as a CEO and you're having the pricing discussion, where should we price this thing at? A lot of it is just, you know, finger in the air. >> I don't know, you know, Kathy Wood might not be willing to pay that price and you want Kathy Wood, right? Um, which, you know, is important to people, but what we give people is uh what we give issuers is just a >> precise demand curve at at every price. um which is data we get because everything is >> you know automated N10 for that offering. So we through IPO access and underwriting we can help companies at that stage and even post IPO through our earnings and say shareholder products we can we can kind of help them connect with their shareholders that way. >> Is there anything macro in the market that concerns you right now? I mean the Fed just raised rates for the first time in 3 years. the 10-year Treasury is near 5%. >> Yeah. >> Inflation concerns, you know, I think are still there. I think it's still elevated. Um, and we've got these huge IPOs coming and everything feels fragile. >> Yeah. >> And and and midterms, obviously, I'm curious how you're thinking about all these big factors right now. >> Yeah. I mean, a lot of people say, well, you've got the inflation rate at above, what is it, 3%, 2%. Um I I grew up in uh communist Bulgaria. So I was born I was born during the final swan song of communism in the in the late 80s and uh 1991 which was my last year in Bulgaria the inflation rate was 180%. Right. So uh >> not quite there yet. >> Yeah. So that so that that was rough and you know life life went on in 1997 which was a couple years after I moved to the US. Bulgaria had the unfortunate distinction of the highest inflation rate in the world. It was in the thousands of percent. So it was literally they were adding zeros. They couldn't print the bills fast enough. They needed more zeros uh in the bills. And I think I think it was very like you viscerally felt the fragility of of the entire system. This this is like nowhere remotely close to that. Uh so >> yeah and uh and and again like the market the macro rates go up rates go down. Um I think we have a lot of tools in this country a lot of great innovation. Um the the fundamentals of the economy in in America are quite strong. The ingredients are there. I have reasons to be more optimistic than pessimistic. So >> that's good to hear. >> I I feel pretty good now. I mean, you look at the center of the AI industry and and what's driving so much this innovation. It's still here. >> Yeah. >> It's not in Europe. Hasn't moved to China. Um, >> and I do wonder how much we're maybe underwriting the deflationary aspect of AI and what that could unlock, right? Especially when you start getting into robotics and all these things and AI doing more things in the physical world. >> Yeah. >> Cost of labor, all these things like we we don't even really have a sense of that yet. >> Well, and also you got to you got to factor in that, you know, for a long time we were just exporting our industry. >> Yeah. >> But now with with AI, we're building data centers here. Um, we're trying to really figure out as a country, how do we get more energy here? >> Yeah. >> Should we be building more nuclear and really taking advantage of that of that innovation? And I think those are actually long-term positive things because we have to figure out how to, you know, break the the morass that got us stuck to a place where we couldn't build anything. And now there's just like huge momentum. Um, yeah, a lot of the things coming out of the administration have been very positive, too. One of the other things we've been working on is the Trump accounts. That's right. >> Robin Hood does a lot of things. We're doing aic trading. We have Robin Hood Ventures. We're doing the tokenization. Um >> all of it goes around this one idea which which I think is a very important one. It's ownership. >> Yeah. >> Right. And I think ownership of highquality financial assets is incredibly important. Right. and uh not just important for the individual in the sense of I can make more money, I have more skin in the game, secure my financial future. That that's all great, but there's a societal benefit to it as well, which is that a society where more individuals are owners um is is a more stable society, right? People have a stake in the success of the industries around them. They have they have a stake in the success of the country. And so all all of our products really ladder to this idea. Ownership of private markets, that's Robin Hood Ventures. Ownership all over the world, that's tokenization. Trump accounts is one of the other things talking about the administration. Ownership from birth. How do you get someone to be immediately plugged into our economy from age zero so that they have the the largest benefit? they get to benefit from for compounding for decades more than than they would have under normal circumstances. >> So, um that's probably going to be one of the most consequential things that >> uh most consequential legacies of this administration like this program >> will survive hopefully in perpetuity and >> lead to a more stable investor base and and a more stable >> I think you and Brad Gerson and everyone who's involved in that deserve a lot of credit for that. Yeah, I think it's I do agree with you and the administration obviously, but like I'm glad that >> the companies in Silicon Valley and really stepped up with this and helped and the app's great, right? It's a good experience. >> I'm glad you like it. Yeah. I mean, we uh I think we take a a large amount of pride and we have a little bit of a chip in our shoulder because this is our way of like serving our country in a sense, right? And it's uh obviously uh it's not like we're uh picking up, you know, arms and and going to battle, right? So I don't want to compare it to that. But you know, the the impact of what we do here could be generational. And also the government is not known for building great products. Yeah. In in fact, we're all sort of like um >> scarred to some degree by things like healthcare.gov and >> the DMV. I mean all >> Yeah. Although I went to the DMV recently. >> You did >> in Redwood City and I was like very impressed at how smooth it was. So >> you went to the DMV? >> I went to the DMV and then I realized, holy I got to I got to up my game. I had this view that government was kind of in the stone age, but things things have gotten very smooth. >> The Redwood DMV's got it together. >> I had to get my Real ID and you know, I went and stood in line and got my Real ID really quickly. Uh >> Wow. Okay. Shout out DMV. I did not expect that. >> Yeah. So, if you haven't been recently, I I highly recommend it. Just try to >> try try try to pay pay your local DM via a visit and uh they're trying to get better, too. >> Okay. Well, we've been dancing around this and maybe we can land it here and I can't believe we're actually just now getting to this. You've been saying tokenization throughout this conversation. I got to ask, man, like what you're stirring the pot with this, you know, like the AMC feud. Companies have been reacting very viscerally to this. I think you all just >> Well, there's one company >> one, but yeah, you had it on the private side a little bit, right? you had some reactions to that, OpenAI and others. >> Um, and I think you all just notched a bit of a win as we're recording this a few days ago here in the US with uh with the innovation exemption, right, which starts to unlock >> the US a little bit. But >> I'm still trying to wrap my head around like why are you pushing on this? Like why do we need to tokenize stocks? >> Yeah. So the main reason is that it's actually really hard to get access to US stocks if you're overseas and you know in some in some markets it's relatively easy and they have robust local capital markets and exchanges. If you're in South America in a lot of places, it >> sure >> it's just tough, right? And it was also tough to get dollars for a while. You know, if you're in a South American country, for example, with a hyperinflating local currency, those people were buying American Express travelers checks, right? And that's why stable coins became so popular. A lot of the usage of stable coins was overseas from people that just wanted a better, cheaper way to get access to US dollars because they would keep their money in it. So in the same way, um, a lot of people want access to US stocks. It's companies that they've heard of, got SpaceX, got Nvidia, so many others. and tokenization uh allows them to have access with actually some better better properties 24/7 fractionalizable so you can break up the token into little itty bitty chunks you don't have to buy a full share uh it can be in your wallet so in particular nobody can confiscate it from you it's not in some you know uh local account it's some financial system that maybe isn't as developed with as as strong protections as we have here in the US. So in a sense I think the companies will be very very happy about this because it creates net new buying of their stock from uh a global market. Robin Hood chain with our stock tokens are live in over 120 countries where you know people probably wouldn't have been buying these US stocks. They don't really have an easy mechanism. So, it just cracks that wide open and opens up an entirely new uh pool uh capital pool of buyers that didn't exist before. >> But then you've got the AMCO, AMCCO and others pushing back and I do think there's a fair push back that and I know you've got >> Well, but you kind of saw he reversed yesterday, right? >> Well, yeah, sure. I think a lot of the AMC thing you have to take into account that um there's like meme activity and there's we have a little bit of a history with AMC dating back to 2021 that that's a little bit idiosyncratic. So I'm actually not sure how much of it is confusion about what tokenization exactly is because this is like a complicated new technology and you know you can imagine >> best case scenario I'm running my business why do I have to deal with like >> changing technologies around capital markets it's like not high on my list I'm trying to >> sell movie tickets and popcorn right or also how much of it is just you know appealing to a re retail base that you know gets excited when there's just >> something to >> people fighting. >> Yeah. But the I think the fair push back I've heard is the voting. How do you solve the governance aspect of not actually owning the stock? >> Oh yeah. I mean we have a solution for that. I we announced that we intend to add voting. The reality too is not a lot of people vote their shares. >> No they don't. But I think it's like it's a nice box check to go like I actually have it. I actually have exposure that way. If you're in like Venezuela and you're looking to, you know, get exposure to US stocks, um, voting is nice, but it's it's probably not the higher order bit, you know. So, I I think, yeah, you can find all sorts of little nitpicks. People had this about electronic trading of stocks as well. They're like, well, I don't get the the the real certificate. It's really nice to have the real certificate. That's a real share. What is this seed and company thing? It's not even in my name. It's in street name. So all of these same criticisms actually landed when stocks started being traded and and brokered electronically rather than physical certificates. So I I think the cat's out of the bag like the this is not reversible now. It's just a question of >> how do we make all of these issuers uh and and stakeholders and you know the exchanges in the US comfortable. Yeah. How do we make them feel that this is like uh this is good for them and and understand because actually if if you look at this if you're an issuer like a AMC or others it's it's basically all upside uh next to no downside. Um so it's it's just very clear that it's going to be a thing and it's innovation and change is is never just uniformly accepted but but it's also inevitable. So, uh, yeah, and we're working with with all the stakeholders to make sure everyone's kind of brought along, but um, yeah, it's it's it's happening. So, uh, yeah, and and now the SEC is is behind tokenization. So, um, and part of the reason we actually started with Europe and when when we were in our event in south of France, we said we want to deliver great products for our international customers. Like that's we're immediately adding value. We're shipping product. We don't want to just like talk about tokenization. You know, some people like to talk about it. It's kind of become a buzzword and you know that they have interviews and stuff like that. We we ship we want to ship real product, put it in people's hands, and that's really the most persuasive thing >> because yeah, I could tell you tokenization is the future, but uh maybe you won't believe me. How about I ship it? People use it. we see it demonstrating value and and if it adds value to uh these customers outside the US, maybe that also demonstrates to folks here that hey, we should we should adopt this technology and figure out a path for it to work in in these markets. And I think that's basically what's happened. I mean, we kind of called our shot many years ago and uh and and we're we're doing what we can to kind of push the industry forward, not just overseas, but but but here as well. And I'll tell you the future, it's going to happen to every asset, private markets coming. You'll be able to we'll have tokenization of privates. It's an inevitability. We'll have any any wealthy person's asset base of tokenization of wine, of real estate, right? It'll all trade 24/7 uh on permissionless networks like like a stock. Yeah. And I think it'll be really cool. I mean, from a technical perspective, it's interesting. But um yeah, for for someone building a portfolio overseas to have lowcost access to any asset that a high netw worth individual here in the US would would be able to have. I wanted to check in with you on the state of prediction markets uh especially going into the midterms. I think you've got KHI and Poly Market kind of battling out in the court of perception and Robin Hood is a huge player and you've been very bullish on prediction markets as we've talked about this in the past. The future of news. >> You were the first person I actually ever heard that said that like I think of this as the future of news. >> What are you expecting kind of especially I think the midterms will be a big moment. every big election is, but how are you gearing up and how are you thinking about that category over the next several months? >> Well, we're building a great uh so prediction markets in the Robin Hood app and we've done a lot of stuff on the infrastructure side too, but as a customer, as a user in the Robin Hood app, it's it's gotten way better and you know, now we have bespoke experiences and hubs for all the major categories. World Cup. We had a really nice World Cup experience where we had all the information in one place, you know, golden boot winner, top goal scorer, uh we had the different groups, midterms, there's like a really nice native map experience where >> if you're trading, it's it's obviously useful and easy, but also if you just wanted to see like how are the midterms going, who's going to win the state of Indiana, you know, and um yeah, we we we have a nice experience there. So uh it's constantly the amount of work that we have to do to improve the product and improve the infrastructure is never ending right um and we're seeing new types of categories come up crypto markets have been very very popular and so increasingly we're starting to see connections and synergies between our prediction markets offerings and uh different assets like crypto and and and we'll start to see more with stocks as well. You're you're seeing the maturation of the industry into a true tradable asset class. Uh and and with like a huge retail component. >> Are you not even going to have the TV on this midterm in terms of trying to follow things? Are you just going to be >> I don't think I'm going to have the TV on very much. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that's gone away concept that we're already moving away from that. >> Yeah. I mean, I just realized e even aside from prediction markets and following the elections, I think a big uh moment to me where I was like, "Wow, things things are changing is when uh I was I was trying to watch the NBA playoffs a couple months ago, and I'm I'm used to just switching the channels. All right, it'll be on ABC or ESPN," and I was like, "Where are this game? Where's this game? >> I can't find it." And then uh I I went and I asked uh my AI agent of my personal AI agent. It's like, "Oh, you got to go to Amazon Prime." So, I'm like, "Man, okay. When the NBA playoffs are hitting Amazon Prime, I think I think it's the the end of the line for linear cable." I still have mine. Uh but yeah, I I I feel like it's going to be like a landline phone. Yeah. >> Before too long. >> I agree. Um last question. And I fortuitously had the chance to catch up with tutor your co-founder at your your AI lab harmonic which is doing a lot of really interesting stuff and approaching it from the the the view of math building foundational models >> and um I won't spoil what's coming but he gave me a tease and it's very interesting. He gave me a question to ask you. Oh great. >> Yeah. He said, "What do you think of AI companies using their platform to solve math versus giving the tools to everyone else to do it?" >> Oh gosh, what a what a softball to me, right? I love that question. I was going to bring this up proactively, right? Um, so we talked a lot about one of the problems being that normal people just don't have access to um invest in these companies >> and and that's led to all these negative effects where the the AI leaders are like, "Why is everyone mad at me?" you know, I'm just running my business. Well, I mean, your your your shareholder base through no fault of your own, but you know, some some of them uh actually OpenAI, great example, they partnered with us and and and uh made investing available for for individuals. Um, but yeah, like mo most people don't really think about this and and and most people are are are very much thinking about all right, how do I grow grow my business as fast and big as possible and beat my competitors, right? Mh. >> And but with something like AI um you have to understand that you have to have a license to operate at the end of the day. Like if the people are against your technology and your company, it's going to be very very difficult. And and I think one thing that is just um a miss frankly is and I can kind of see how they got there is AI companies keeping these advanced models inhouse >> and just making the discoveries. They're employees running them to to make discoveries. >> Open just solved a millennium problem and all of that. >> Yeah. Like um I think the future where there's just these giant data centers in uh in in uh in people's neighborhoods that are just running workloads from the employees of the AI companies and the AI companies are making all the discoveries and creating all the inventions and oh maybe they're creating the drugs and producing them, right? That's like a very centralized almost dystopian future. And I think for a multitude of reasons uh it's it's the less likely future. I think the more the more inspiring one is building the tools so that normal people get access to them. So I think it would have been a much better outcome if it was you know a mathematician that was using the open AI model that was you know that that was coming up that was coming up with these discoveries and not just employees running it and spending what it was tens of millions in in compute. Um, so yeah, I think I think that's that's the future I believe in and that that's I think the more likely one. >> Well, thank you for your time. Appreciate it. >> All right. Always a pleasure. >> Banking should feel like modern software. Get everything you need in one place. Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Mercury is a fintech, not a bank. Check the show notes for details. Granola is the best AI notepad I've tried. It works everywhere. on a video or phone call in person or an Apple Watch. Try it now at granola.ai/sources and use the promo code sources at checkout for three months off. Jiradlassing is where your team and your agents work from the same context. 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