Robinhood is bringing more crypto-market playbooks into traditional trading. On September 29, 2026, at the third annual HOOD Summit in Houston, Texas, the brokerage that originally grew on zero-commission stock trading announced a set of new features for active traders: AI agents that can independently research the market and execute trades, Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual contracts for eligible U.S. users (up to 10x leverage), and weekend trading for certain U.S. stocks and ETFs.

This isn’t an isolated move. On July 1, 2026, Robinhood launched the Robinhood Chain mainnet in London, along with a bundle of tokenized stocks, AI agent trading, and DeFi products. Its crypto perpetual contracts became one of the fastest-growing product lines about a year after going live in Europe. When the price of Bitcoin fell more than 50% from last year’s peak and overall crypto trading cooled, Robinhood chose to reverse-export its crypto market infrastructure capabilities to traditional assets, using a 24/7, automated trading experience to win over active traders.

AI agents: expanding from stock beta to crypto, with configurable “persistent instructions”

Robinhood’s rollout of AI agents can be traced back to May 27, 2026. At the time, the company announced “Robinhood is Now Open to Agents,” allowing customers to connect their own AI agents to their accounts through Robinhood’s proprietary AI-native MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. This automates trading decisions and order execution, and includes built-in safety controls and a real-time activity feed. CEO Vlad Tenev said at the time: “Our mission has always been to democratize finance, and now, this mission extends to AI agents.”

Initially, AI agents supported only stock trading, and they had to connect to separately funded isolated accounts, under strict controls. In remarks at a Goldman Sachs Communacopia technology conference exchange on September 9, 2026, Robinhood executives clearly defined the goal as “giving active traders the ability of a hedge fund in their pockets,” and revealed that the company would roll out more new features aimed at active traders at its Houston event later this month.

Adoption has exceeded expectations. According to a July 2026 report by bomo.news, since the AI agent stock beta was launched in late May, more than 70,000 accounts have adopted the technology. An official announcement on July 1, 2026 further confirmed that Agentic Trading for Crypto would be rolled out soon to eligible U.S. traders, with no additional fees.

This Houston summit further clarified the boundaries of AI agent capabilities: new Robinhood Agents can use OpenAI or Anthropic models to research markets and execute trades. Ultimately, users will be able to set persistent instructions for automated strategies. This means AI agents are evolving from a “single-use assistance tool” into automated trading accounts that can operate long-term.

That said, Robinhood has also issued clear warnings about the risks of AI agent trading: agentic trading involves significant risks, including the possibility of losing all invested capital; AI-driven strategies may perform poorly under certain market conditions, execute rapidly, and be difficult to monitor or stop in real time.

Perpetual contracts: Crypto’s original product enters the U.S. market

Perpetual contracts are a standard product in the crypto market over the past decade, allowing investors to maintain leveraged positions without an expiration date, and thus becoming a core tool for around-the-clock trading. After Robinhood launched crypto perpetual contracts in Europe last year, the product quickly became one of the company’s fastest-growing product lines. This prompted the company to expand perpetual contracts into the U.S. market alongside traditional assets.

According to a CoinDesk report dated September 29, 2026, Robinhood is rolling out crypto-linked perpetual contracts to eligible U.S. customers, with maximum leverage up to 10x for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Earlier, on July 1, 2026, Bloomberg reported that Robinhood had launched in Europe perpetual contracts linked to commodities, ETFs, and currencies, with underlying assets including gold, silver, crude oil, and the EUR/USD exchange rate—also with leverage up to 10x. None of these contracts have an expiration date. In an interview, Johann Kerbrat, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Robinhood Crypto and International, said: “The world doesn’t stop happening on weekends. We see people want to hedge their positions.”

A real-world reference for this demand is the market volatility at the early stage of the Iran conflict in 2026. At the time, major markets were closed, and traders turned to decentralized platform Hyperliquid’s perpetual contracts, betting on the prices of traditional assets such as oil over the weekend. This explains why Robinhood has to position “trading is possible even on weekends” as a selling point.

In Robinhood’s decentralized wallet, Robinhood Wallet, eligible users can access perpetual contracts via the decentralized exchange Lighter. According to the official announcement on July 1, 2026, Lighter has committed to provide 11 million $LIT tokens to the Robinhood community. Users can earn 2x points when trading perpetual contracts through Robinhood Wallet, while trading on Lighter’s web interface earns 1x.

Weekend trading: completing the last missing piece of the 24-hour market

Weekend trading is not an independent feature, but an extension of Robinhood’s all-weather trading strategy. CoinDesk noted that Robinhood will offer weekend trading on some U.S. stocks and ETFs, filling the remaining gap since the “24 Hour Market” launched in 2023. Traditional U.S. stock markets open and close on a fixed schedule from Monday to Friday, while crypto markets run all year round. Last year, Robinhood already launched tokenized trading of U.S. stocks in Europe, and in July 2026 it rolled out a new version of tokenization and expanded it to more jurisdictions. Tokenization uses blockchain to create digital representations of assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate, making it possible to trade stocks even when the market is closed.

This trend of “developing crypto technology into traditional finance” is spreading throughout the industry. Startups such as trade.xyz have already launched perpetual contracts linked to traditional assets like crude oil, as well as tools that let investors bet on their stock price before a SpaceX listing. For Robinhood, the significance of weekend trading is to retain active traders who are used to the crypto market’s cadence, preventing them from moving to other platforms when traditional markets are closed.

In addition to the three core features mentioned above, Robinhood also announced this time that it would extend options trading hours, provide more intraday margin, and add products that let users trade contracts related to the company’s earnings metrics. Taken together, these moves point to a single goal: to keep more trading activity by active traders within the Robinhood platform.

Impact and risks: The battle for active traders has only just begun

Robinhood’s combined moves—AI agents, perpetual contracts, and weekend trading—point to a clear strategic shift: upgrading from a “retail-friendly zero-commission brokerage” to a platform that provides institutional-grade tools for active traders. Behind this shift is a straightforward business motivation: active traders drive higher trading volume and revenue, and a cooling crypto market forces the platform to find new growth engines.

But the risks are just as clear. AI agent trading may cause users to lose money quickly without direct intervention; the leverage feature of perpetual contracts can amplify losses during market volatility; and weekend and around-the-clock trading means risk exposure can’t be “paused” during market closures the way it can in traditional markets. Robinhood has already warned on product pages that agentic trading may result in total loss of principal, but whether retail investors fully understand these risks remains unknown.

From a regulatory standpoint, Robinhood’s expansion also faces multiple rounds of approvals. The company disclosed that its Singapore entity has obtained capital markets services licenses from local regulators, and that its U.K. crypto business plans to launch “soon.” In the U.S., the compliance boundaries for futures and crypto products are still evolving. Rolling out high-leverage products to eligible customers rather than all retail users also reflects a cautious path under regulatory constraints.

Key variables worth watching next include: the actual go-live timing and adoption rate of “persistent instruction” functionality for AI agents; the pace of regulatory compliance for crypto perpetual contracts in the U.S.; whether weekend stock trading will attract additional attention from regulators regarding investor protection; and whether these new features can truly drive Robinhood’s trading volume and revenue amid a cooling of crypto trading.