AI adoption for teams in financial services has been surging, but its impact at $88bn fintech Robinhood has been cloudy, until now. Speaking on the 20VC Podcast, CEO Vlad Tenev revealed that AI writes roughly half the new code produced at the brokerage.
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It could be more than half; Tenev said “it’s difficult to tell with these agentic systems.” He said Robinhood has ditched “autocomplete” AI tools like GitHub Copilot for newer platforms like Cursor and Windsurf, where “all of the code is written by AI.” Adoption of AI tools at Robinhood is close to 100%, he said, noting that “it’s hard to even determine what the human generated code is.”
Tenev is, however, cautious about fully embracing AI for all coding tasks. “There’s still a problem with hallucinations and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to scaffold against that,” he says.
Will Robinhood’s AI adoption impact hiring? Perhaps not, as the fintech has always had a lean headcount relative to its size and revenues. Regardless of AI, Tenev said he wants Robinhood staff to be “executing relentlessly”
In more traditional finance, AI appears to be having an impact on hiring. Citi revealed in its Q2 earnings presentation that a new AI tool had cut 100,000 hours of developer time; coincidentally, the bank also increased its severance payments due to its “realignment of the technology workforce.”
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