Kraken to relaunch app with AI agent trading

Crypto exchange Kraken has announced that it will relaunch its mobile app with autonomous AI agents integrated, giving retail traders software that can observe the markets and place orders on their behalf. 

The plan was announced in a company blog post and will involve a complete revamp of the existing app instead of a regular update to the existing one. “Unlike other trading platforms, this won’t be an AI assistant or a copilot bolted onto the old version of the app,” the post reads. “The financial intelligence is built into the fabric of Kraken itself. That’s what will make it feel alive.”

Agentic AI gains more traction

The agents will be able to track conditions across markets, recommend trades, and execute them without requiring a user to supervise or approve every single action. The bots can also act on user prompts and adjust based on how earlier decisions played out.

The user sets a goal for the agents, and the app organizes itself around this goal, all while running in the background, Kraken explained. The exchange also emphasized that the user keeps the final say on each trade. The statement also mentioned in-built risk management features tied to a user’s preset risk tolerance, a standard feature across the AI trading tools that are being released in recent days.

The company noted that AI-generated recommendations for trading carry risk, which includes the loss of capital, and are not guaranteed to work for every individual. Kraken also stated that in the U.S., advice on crypto assets comes from Payward Interactive, Inc., while advice on securities comes from Kraken Adviser LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser.

Kraken joins the AI agent industry race

Kraken is joining up with other crypto institutions in leaning on AI agents. Gemini opened its platform and APIs to users’ AI agent setups in April, while Coinbase used a June product event to preview Coinbase Advisor, an SEC-registered, AI-powered financial adviser. OKX and Binance have also added AI features of their own.

However, Kraken is the first major exchange to place AI agents at the center of its application instead of simply as a feature. This shift could point to a new age where exchanges reposition themselves from simple buy-and-sell platforms into more extensive financial software.

It comes with obvious risks, however, as autonomous systems can increase losses by a huge margin, and competing agents trading based off the same signals raise the odds of flash crashes in the market. Regulators continue to work out how existing rules apply when an AI agent is making the trading decisions.

The app relaunch is coming during a busy stretch for Kraken. The exchange has rolled out crypto perpetual futures in the US and added Solana DEX trading through its main app. The company has also started preparations for a possible public listing since last year.

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