# Robinhood plans to monetize agent tools through subscriptions

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/robinhood-plans-to-monetize-agent-tools-through/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Vlad Tenev](https://realalpha.app/people/vlad-tenev/) · Vlad Tenev is co-founder and CEO of Robinhood. · Co-founded Robinhood in 2013, then steered it from a $500M loss in 2023 to a $1.1B profit.
- Host: [Alex Heath](https://realalpha.app/people/alex-heath/) · Founder & host, Sources · Left The Verge to start Sources in 2025; it has made over $1M since, mostly from sponsors.
- Show: Sources
- Episode: [Robinhood’s CEO on letting AI trade your money](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/), Oct 13, 2026
- Moment: 18:44 to 21:53 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/robinhood-plans-to-monetize-agent-tools-through/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1124

## Quote

> “One is a lot of customers **don't want that information shared** with the apps.”
> — [Vlad Tenev](https://realalpha.app/people/vlad-tenev/) at [20:56](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1256) · Sources

## Takeaways

1. Transaction-based sharing could expose customer financial data.
2. Subscriptions avoid sharing balances and trading activity with partners.
3. Robinhood wants outside providers to add data and tools.

## About this segment

Robinhood sees subscriptions as a cleaner way to pay agent marketplace providers than transaction-based revenue shares. That also helps keep customers' balances and strategies private.

From “Robinhood’s CEO on letting AI trade your money”, Oct 13, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[18:47](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1127) completely different probably six 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 Robinhood agents better, but an actual business for the company? I do think the vast majority of Robinhood'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. Subscription is a bigger and bigger thing for us. I mean, you look at Robinhood Gold for the main app, that's a multi-hundred million dollar a year revenue business started from a small base. We want to make it as good as possible and create this marketplace where developers and service providers can come in and have an

[19:38](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1178) incentive to plug in their data. Is it going to be as big as the Apple App Store? I'm not sure. But yeah, I guess I never try to presuppose and preordain 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 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 would I be like oh no yeah crypto I want to keep to like seven percent right that's that's a really good seven percent let's just not keep it uh it's a portfolio Vlad yeah um well no but so the marketplace it's a portfolio where everything has to be as big as possible. The marketplace though, I mean, is the business model some kind

[20:31](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1231) of take rate or subscription sharing component? How do you, cause 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 Robinhood 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 transaction-based or an asset-based revenue share for a couple of reasons. One is a lot of customers don't want that information shared with the apps. You don't want 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. You're not going to want people inspecting all of your trades.

[21:18](https://realalpha.app/v/rkTMQ3oHzFE/?t=1278) Sure. 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 Robinhood because they know we're not just sharing their trading data 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 uh is going anywhere they don't want it of course yeah is there anything that the