Why Robinhood Stock Skyrocketed 29% in May

Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) stock jumped 29% in May, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The trading company introduced new artificial intelligence (AI) agents to its platform, which got a thumbs-up from the market.

Dependent on Bitcoin

Previously, Robinhood stock had been tumbling. It's highly correlated with the movement of Bitcoin, which plays a major role in its revenue growth. As Bitcoin soared, so did Robinhood stock. But lower Bitcoin prices have led to a sharp deceleration in Robinhood's sales, and the stock has reflected that.

As recently as the 2025 third quarter, revenue was up 100% year over year, driven by a 300% increase in cryptocurrency revenue. In the 2026 first quarter, total revenue increased 15%, and cryptocurrency revenue was down 47%.

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Robinhood's model is dependant on other risky products as well, including options trading and one of its newer segments, Prediction Markets.

It is also embracing more traditional financial products like credit cards and retirement accounts, and it offers a slew of perks for its Robinhood Gold membership program. It plans to add more bank-type products to the platform as it expands, providing more stability as it aims to disrupt the traditional financial services industry.

Do AI agents change anything?

Investors who are confident about Robinhood appreciate its disruptive and innovative nature, and that's where AI agents come in. The company announced that it's launching AI agents for trading as well as shopping through its credit card program. Users can not only tell the agents to trade for them, but they can also create prompts and let the agent complete trades for them using specified criteria.

Here's one of the examples the company gave: "An active trader can backtest a mean reversion strategy to see how it performed historically, and deploy it to automatically buy oversold stocks and sell when they revert to the mean."

That's a pretty sophisticated use of agentic AI. Professional traders use these kinds of strategies all the time, but now any trader can do it themselves with a simple prompt. Breaking down financial barriers has been Robinhood's mission from the get-go; it was the first platform to offer fee-free trades, which has now become the norm for most platforms. Eventually, this could become standard, too. However, it's not hard to see the risk in retail investors letting AI trade their funds.

Robinhood stock had been sluggish prior to the announcement, and it ticked higher right after. However, it's still down 20% year to date. As exciting as AI agents for trading might be, the market is still wary of the company's reliance on Bitcoin and other risky activities, and AI agents can add risk as well. Although they might be the future of the trading industry, they're still largely untested in this area.

Jennifer Saibil has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.