Robinhood Boosts AI Capabilities with Pluto Capital Acquisition

Robinhood has acquired AI-powered investment research platform Pluto Capital for an undisclosed amount.

According to a July 1 announcement, the purchase will give Robinhood users access to several features, including enhanced data analytics, personalized trading strategies, real-time analytics and portfolio management.

Under the agreement, Pluto founder and CEO Jacob Sansbury will join Robinhood to accelerate the integration of AI-powered capabilities. Sansbury is the youngest engineer ever hired at Bridgewater and led the SDK for game developers at NVIDIA’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service.

Mayank Agarwal, Vice President, Engineering, said:

“(Pluto) has built an impressive platform that is highly respected in the financial services industry. Importantly, their AI expertise combined with their mission-driven passion for democratizing finance will complement our team’s efforts to deliver AI-powered tools to our clients.”

Notably, the acquisition comes as Robinhood continues its international expansion efforts. Last month, the platform announced the acquisition of Bitstamp, a European exchange, as part of its global growth plan.

Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly important tool in finance

Over the past year, several leading companies have integrated AI into their products and services, with market observers attributing the growth to the proliferation of Generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which enable human-like interactions on their platforms.

Deloitte’s financial services industry forecasts for 2024 highlight that this technology will have a significant impact on the financial sector over the next three to five years.

The company predicts that GenAI-enabled apps will dominate the retail investment advice space. They predict that usage will grow from its current initial stage to 78% by 2028, potentially becoming the leading source of retail investment advice by 2027.

But the report also warns that the technology will increase the spread of hyper-realistic fake content. That could increase fraud losses in the U.S. to $40 billion by 2027, up from $12.3 billion in 2023.

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