JPMorgan

Robinhood

Anvil

America’s biggest banks spent mid-October shutting the door on outside AI agents.
<a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/tag/jpmorgan" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">JPMorgan Chase</a> CEO Jamie Dimon said on Oct. 13 that the <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/artificial-intelligence/jpmorgan-ceo-sends-blunt-warning-on-rogue-ai-agents" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">bank blocks external agents</a> from operating customer accounts. Within days, Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/10/23/banks-move-to-limit-ai-agent-access/92385119007/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">moved to restrict them too</a>.
Prashant Reddy, co-founder and CEO of Artian AI, doesn’t read that as rejection.
<blockquote>
 “I actually don’t see a lot of refusing to adopt,” Reddy told TheStreet&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Roundtable</a> at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.money2020.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Money20/20</a> USA.
</blockquote>
Reddy led AI and data engineering at JPMorgan before founding Artian. The startup has <a href="https://artian.ai/funding/seed" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">raised $8 million to date</a>, including a $6 million seed round led by Work-Bench, and builds agentic AI systems for financial institutions.
<a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/markets/varonis-systems-jumps-52-places-on-the-roundtable-100" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Related: Varonis Systems jumps 52 places on the Roundtable 100</a>
<h2 id="wall-street-has-run-automated-trading-for-decades">Wall Street has run automated trading for decades</h2>
Reddy said agentic trading “has existed in the institutional space for almost twenty years now.”
Those earlier systems are rules-based algorithms rather than AI agents, but they already <a href="https://www.quantifiedstrategies.com/what-percentage-trading-is-algorithmic/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">handle the majority of U.S. equity volume</a>.
<a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/tags/robinhood" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Robinhood</a> is trying to move into the gap between retail and institutional trading. The broker <a href="https://robinhood.com/us/en/newsroom/robinhood-is-now-open-to-agents/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">opened its platform to AI agents on May 27</a>, and by its third-quarter results on Oct. 27,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1783879/000178387926000170/q32026robinhoodamendedex991.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">about 200,000 customers had opened agentic trading accounts</a>, generating more than $1.6 billion in cumulative notional volume.
Reddy said Robinhood’s push is “about scaling” and building consumer trust in the algorithm. Inside banks, he sees a bigger internal opportunity in helping firms move staff into new business lines quickly.
Dimon has said JPMorgan <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/artificial-intelligence/jpmorgan-ceo-sends-blunt-warning-on-rogue-ai-agents" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">already uses AI agents internally</a> and plans to deploy them in customer-facing apps.
<h2 id="more-news">More news:</h2>
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</ul>
<h2 id="why-the-first-answer-is-always-no">Why the first answer is always no</h2>
Part of the fear behind the blocks is about money. Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok <a href="https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/is-an-agentic-bank-run-coming" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">warned in September</a> that agents could sweep household cash automatically out of checking accounts paying a 0.1% national average and into accounts paying 3.3% to 5%. That would drain the cheap deposits banks lend against.
Reddy said AI is making work once “considered an unreasonable amount of effort” economically viable, which “is going to create new market structures.” Institutions that didn’t anticipate those shifts respond the same way every time, he said.
<blockquote>
 “The initial reaction is no, that’s not allowed until the institution figures out what are the right controls,” Reddy said.
</blockquote>
Electronic and algorithmic trading received the same response and scrutiny before becoming mainstream for institutional and retail traders alike.
His advice is to start with lower-risk processes and expand as best practices form. Ignoring the shift entirely, he warned, would be a mistake.
<blockquote>
 “If it’s here, you have to use it,” Reddy said. “Otherwise you’re gonna be left behind.”
</blockquote>

Artian CEO says bank AI bans follow the algo trading playbook

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