Robinhood plans U.S. perps with up to 10x leverage, weekend stock trading, and in-app AI agents

Robinhood said on Tuesday it intends to bring perpetual futures to eligible U.S. users "in the coming months," alongside 24/7 trading for a curated list of U.S. stocks and a new tool that lets customers build AI trading agents inside the app. The announcement, reported by The Block and flagged in Decrypt's Wednesday briefing, bundles three separate product pushes into one release — and leans heavily on a superlative from CEO Vlad Tenev that deserves a closer look.

What was announced

On the derivatives side, Robinhood says eligible U.S. users will be able to take long or short positions on assets including bitcoin, with up to 10x leverage on bitcoin and ether perpetuals and 3x on other perpetual futures, per The Block. The product will be "supported by Bitstamp" — the exchange Robinhood itself acquired — and the company said it will charge 0.01% per trade through the end of the year. Users will be able to set stop-loss and take-profit orders, track a liquidation price in real time, and receive alerts when a position is at risk, according to the statement Robinhood released Tuesday.

Tenev framed the launch on X as "bringing America its first true perps. No expiry, with P&L settled every 15 minutes," calling it a "new chapter for U.S. derivatives."

Separately, Robinhood said it plans to extend trading to a curated list of U.S. equities and ETFs around the clock, including weekends — but "pending regulatory review." This builds on the platform's existing "24 Hour Market," which currently runs from Sunday 8pm ET through Friday 8pm ET. The Block reports the weekend expansion would be supported by Bruce ATS, an alternative trading system.

The third piece is Robinhood Agents, a feature letting users build AI agents inside the app to "develop powerful strategies, run detailed research, or trade automatically." It extends the agentic-trading service Robinhood launched in May, which let customers connect third-party AI agents. Robinhood says more than 150,000 users have opened agentic trading accounts since that launch, with agents "now using its tools nearly 30 million times a day," and VP of product management Abhishek Fatehpuria said the company is "setting the standard for what agentic finance can be."

Key facts

• Perps leverage: up to 10x on BTC and ETH perpetuals, 3x on others (The Block, citing Robinhood's Tuesday statement).
• Perps fee: 0.01% per trade through the end of 2026; ongoing pricing not disclosed (The Block).
• Perps infrastructure: supported by Bitstamp, which Robinhood owns (The Block).
• Settlement: P&L settled every 15 minutes, no expiry (Tenev, on X).
• 24/7 equities: curated list of stocks and ETFs, weekend trading "pending regulatory review," via Bruce ATS (The Block).
• AI agents: 150,000+ agentic-trading accounts; agents using Robinhood tools ~30 million times/day — figures supplied by Robinhood, not independently verified (The Block).
• Timing: announced Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026; rollout "in the coming months" (The Block; Decrypt).

The real-world read

"America's first true perps" is a marketing claim, not a verified fact. It comes from Robinhood's own CEO, and the qualifier "true" is doing the heavy lifting — a superlative engineered to survive comparison with existing U.S. crypto-derivatives products. Treat it as promotion.

The regulatory picture is conspicuously uneven. Robinhood explicitly says the weekend equities expansion is "pending regulatory review," yet the perpetual-futures announcement carries no equivalent caveat beyond the phrase "eligible U.S. users." Perpetual futures for U.S. retail sit squarely in CFTC territory, and offering 10x leverage to retail is exactly the kind of product that historically attracts scrutiny. What framework the perps launch relies on, and whether it has cleared regulators, isn't stated. That silence is worth noting, not glossing over.

Bitstamp is Robinhood. Describing the perps as "supported by Bitstamp" reads like a third-party endorsement, but Robinhood acquired Bitstamp — so this is vertical integration that keeps trading fees in-house, not an independent venue vouching for the product.

The 0.01% fee is a teaser. It runs "through the end of the year." What happens on January 1 wasn't disclosed. Intro pricing on a leveraged product is a customer-acquisition tool; read it as such.

The AI-agent metrics come from an interested party. "Nearly 30 million" tool uses a day and "more than 150,000" accounts are Robinhood's own numbers, offered without third-party verification. "Tool uses" is also an undefined unit — a single agent can hit an API many times, so a large call count doesn't map cleanly to trading volume or revenue.

One outside voice quoted is a competitor. The Block pairs the news with Ondo Perps CEO David Wells calling the U.S. perps market a "huge opportunity" — Wells runs a rival perps venture, so his enthusiasm is talking his own book, not neutral analysis.

On corroboration: Decrypt's Wednesday "Morning Minute" headline confirms the three-part announcement — perps, weekend stocks, AI traders — but the body text published in that briefing covers an unrelated privacy item (Aztec relaunching zk.money), so it adds little detail beyond confirming the announcement happened. The substance here rests on The Block's reporting of Robinhood's own statement.

Opinion, and whose

• Vlad Tenev (Robinhood CEO): the launch is a "new chapter for U.S. derivatives" and "America's first true perps." A forecast-flavored marketing claim from the seller.
• Abhishek Fatehpuria (Robinhood VP, product management): the company is "setting the standard for what agentic finance can be." Vendor framing.
• David Wells (Ondo Perps CEO): sees a "huge opportunity" in U.S. perps because "there are more opportunities now that are opening up that were just never possible." A competitor's bullish read on the same market.

None of these are facts about performance or approval — they are the positions of parties with a direct stake in the product succeeding.

Sources

• The Block (Tier 2, reputable secondary), "Robinhood to launch perps, weekend stock trading for US users," Sept. 30, 2026 — primary reporting on Robinhood's Tuesday statement: leverage tiers, fees, Bitstamp, Bruce ATS, AI-agent figures, and the Tenev and Wells quotes.
• Decrypt (Tier 2, reputable secondary), "Morning Minute: Robinhood Adds Perps, Weekend Stocks, and AI Traders," Sept. 30, 2026 — headline corroborates the three-part announcement; the excerpt's body covered an unrelated Aztec item and added no further Robinhood detail.
• Vlad Tenev, on X — CEO statement quoted by The Block; promotional, treated as attributed opinion.
• Figures on AI-agent adoption are Robinhood's own and were not independently verified.

This is news coverage, not financial advice; nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or trade anything.