Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev Wants To Reshape The American Dream Using AI, Crypto: 'We Can Be A Leader In Both'

Retail trading giant Robinhood's CEO, Vlad Tenev, said his company is investing in a big way in the two hot technological shifts that are happening right now: artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency.

In an exclusive interview with Stocktwits on Friday, Tenev said, "I think we can be a leader in both or definitely well positioned."

While noting that most financial companies don't have a coherent AI strategy, the executive underlined three different stages in the technology's evolution.

As the first step, he foresees a change in internal operations when companies use AI tools to augment their work. 

"We have made huge investments for the past couple [of] years, making it as easy as possible to adopt internally and actually goaling the teams on that," Tenev said.

The Robinhood CEO said the second phase of AI adoption is the use of co-pilots within products in a helpful way.

"We have started to do that as well in effect," he said, adding that the first two cortex co-pilot use cases are "what's going on with the stock; how do I construct an options trade."

Tenev said this tool augments a user's research or transaction process.

According to him, the third stage of AI adoption is autonomous financial agents, which are sophisticated AIs that can manage the entire life cycle required of a financial professional, namely financial advice and taxation.

"It could just be doing a lot of the heavy lifting; a lot of the core transactional things will be done by AIs in the future," he said.

Tenev said the American dream is now less about home ownership than figuring out one's finances and becoming an investor. 

"You can start that with much smaller amounts and as early as possible," to gain ownership into the American economy, which is increasingly representative of the global economy, he said.

He added that this drives many decisions about what products Robinhood offers.

Robinhood stock ended Fridays' session up 4.23% at $48.59, with the year-to-performance showing a gain of over 30%.

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