Robinhood Markets Inc. (ticker HOOD) has been making news lately. On June 30, Robinhood announced a number of game-changing products and services for its retail users in the United States and the European Union. Now, the trading platform is planning to widen access to privately held companies in the U.S. On September 15, the company announced the launch of Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI), a closed-end fund that filed an initial registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Once approved, the fund—which would be managed by Robinhood Ventures DE LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary—will offer retail investors exposure to private firms in technology sectors while they are still privately held. Robinhood’s recent offerings seek to provide retail investors access to investment opportunities once reserved for the elite. Johann Kerbrat, GM and SVP of Crypto at Robinhood, told Cryptonews during an exclusive interview in San Francisco that the platform has additional plans to make this a reality. Cryptonews: What is your main goal for Robinhood Crypto currently, and why? Johann Kerbrat: We recently launched a number of new crypto tokens in the U.S. with the goal being to really increase our offerings. This will provide U.S. users additional access to new offerings. We have also made this all available through Robinhood Legend, our new platform for advanced traders. Legend lets users trade crypto, futures, and equities in a single tool. People using Legend are also able to use smart exchange routing to route orders to exchanges rather than through market makers. CN: Robinhood has also recently introduced artificial intelligence (AI) features. Can you please explain these? JK: Sure. Robinhood Gold customers can now access Cortex Digests. This is basically a new AI agent that works for our users, so every time a user opens a crypto or stock page, they will get a summary of what is happening in the market. News summaries are also made available for those assets to help users better understand why assets are moving up or down. We launched this feature because we noticed Robinhood customers would typically receive a price notification that Bitcoin, for instance, went up. However, they wouldn’t understand why this is the case and would often look on social media platforms like X or Reddit to understand. The goal here is to look at market news and bundle that with reasoning to provide customers with an understanding of different markets. CN: It has been a few months since Robinhood launched U.S. stock and exchange-traded fund (ETF) tokens for EU users. Robinhood also launched staking services to eligible US users. How has the progress been so far? JK: Overall, staking has been doing very well, and we have seen impressive adoption. People are not only excited to get rewards by staking, but are also happy to contribute to the network. We have also seen people use staking for the first time and then continue to do this because of the excitement around it. Other projects, like our stock tokens, are also doing well. We only had 200 asset offerings, and we are now at 400, so we have doubled this. The stock tokens provide exposure to the U.S.-equivalent assets, and we are now seeing a variety of assets increase. For instance, Robinhood’s IPO is now available in stock tokens. CN: How is the progress coming along on Robinhood’s Layer-2 (L2) blockchain? JK: We are still very excited to build an L2 that integrates both tools and compliance. Stock tokens will be the first thing that the L2 supports. The L2 will be built on the Arbitrum stack. There is currently no release date set, but we are actively working on thisRobinhood Markets Inc. (ticker HOOD) has been making news lately. On June 30, Robinhood announced a number of game-changing products and services for its retail users in the United States and the European Union. Now, the trading platform is planning to widen access to privately held companies in the U.S. On September 15, the company announced the launch of Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI), a closed-end fund that filed an initial registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Once approved, the fund—which would be managed by Robinhood Ventures DE LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary—will offer retail investors exposure to private firms in technology sectors while they are still privately held. Robinhood’s recent offerings seek to provide retail investors access to investment opportunities once reserved for the elite. Johann Kerbrat, GM and SVP of Crypto at Robinhood, told Cryptonews during an exclusive interview in San Francisco that the platform has additional plans to make this a reality. Cryptonews: What is your main goal for Robinhood Crypto currently, and why? Johann Kerbrat: We recently launched a number of new crypto tokens in the U.S. with the goal being to really increase our offerings. This will provide U.S. users additional access to new offerings. We have also made this all available through Robinhood Legend, our new platform for advanced traders. Legend lets users trade crypto, futures, and equities in a single tool. People using Legend are also able to use smart exchange routing to route orders to exchanges rather than through market makers. CN: Robinhood has also recently introduced artificial intelligence (AI) features. Can you please explain these? JK: Sure. Robinhood Gold customers can now access Cortex Digests. This is basically a new AI agent that works for our users, so every time a user opens a crypto or stock page, they will get a summary of what is happening in the market. News summaries are also made available for those assets to help users better understand why assets are moving up or down. We launched this feature because we noticed Robinhood customers would typically receive a price notification that Bitcoin, for instance, went up. However, they wouldn’t understand why this is the case and would often look on social media platforms like X or Reddit to understand. The goal here is to look at market news and bundle that with reasoning to provide customers with an understanding of different markets. CN: It has been a few months since Robinhood launched U.S. stock and exchange-traded fund (ETF) tokens for EU users. Robinhood also launched staking services to eligible US users. How has the progress been so far? JK: Overall, staking has been doing very well, and we have seen impressive adoption. People are not only excited to get rewards by staking, but are also happy to contribute to the network. We have also seen people use staking for the first time and then continue to do this because of the excitement around it. Other projects, like our stock tokens, are also doing well. We only had 200 asset offerings, and we are now at 400, so we have doubled this. The stock tokens provide exposure to the U.S.-equivalent assets, and we are now seeing a variety of assets increase. For instance, Robinhood’s IPO is now available in stock tokens. CN: How is the progress coming along on Robinhood’s Layer-2 (L2) blockchain? JK: We are still very excited to build an L2 that integrates both tools and compliance. Stock tokens will be the first thing that the L2 supports. The L2 will be built on the Arbitrum stack. There is currently no release date set, but we are actively working on this