Kraken is rebuilding its mobile app around agentic artificial intelligence, a shift the exchange told CNBC could mark the next major competitive battleground among crypto platforms. The relaunch positions Kraken to give users access to AI agents that continuously monitor markets, identify investing opportunities and execute trades in real time, reflecting a broader shift toward AI-native financial products.
What Agentic Trading Means
Agentic trading differs from traditional automated systems that follow fixed rules — these platforms can evaluate multiple variables, learn from new information and pursue objectives defined by the user within set parameters. Kraken’s Chief Data Officer, Kamo Asatryan, framed the effort as an attempt to close the gap between retail and professional traders. He noted that Kraken’s most active professional traders stay engaged even in down markets, and the company wants everyday customers to have that same capability and level of information.
Kraken Prepares to Relaunch Mobile App With AI-Powered Trading
How the New App Will Work
The app’s onboarding will use AI to learn a user’s goals, risk tolerance, funding preferences and financial profile in a single flow, then build a draft portfolio that users can review, adjust and approve, complete with explanations for each recommendation. Once a user is invested, the system will deliver AI-curated insights, portfolio-relevant news and proactive suggestions, such as flagging idle cash that could be put to work, with both the conversations and the interface adapting over time.
Crucially, the experience is described as agentic but not fully autonomous — the AI surfaces opportunities and recommends next steps, but trades and recommendations only go through with the customer’s explicit confirmation. Kraken has been direct about this distinction in its own messaging. Kraken said the new app would embed financial intelligence into the core product rather than layering AI on top of the existing interface, adding that this integration is what would make the experience feel responsive.
Kraken Homepage
Compliance and Guardrails
Because the product spans both crypto assets and securities, Kraken has structured its advisory function across two entities. Kraken said U.S. crypto-asset advice will come through Payward Interactive, Inc., while securities advice will run through Kraken Adviser LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser, with the two kept as separate legal entities. The company has also said the system will include safety features tied to each user’s declared risk tolerance, intended to constrain how aggressively the AI can act on a user’s behalf.
Some reporting has described the underlying capability in more autonomous terms than Kraken’s own framing suggests. It described agents that could execute trades without requiring supervision of every action, underscoring that the precise boundary between recommendation and independent execution remains a key detail to watch as the product ships.
Part of a Broader Buildout
The relaunch follows a series of product moves at Kraken this year. Underpinning the effort is the Kraken CLI, an open-source execution engine designed to give AI models and developers native access to crypto markets. The exchange has also added U.S. crypto perpetual futures, tokenized IPO access, new lending programs, and integrated Solana decentralized-exchange trading directly into its core app.
Founded in 2011, Kraken is among the oldest crypto exchanges still operating. The agentic push also lands during a sensitive period for the company’s public-market ambitions. Kraken confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC in November 2025, initially targeting a first-quarter 2026 listing backed by an $800 million raise valuing the company near $20 billion; those plans were paused in March amid market conditions, and Kraken’s valuation has since slipped to roughly $13.3 billion following a $200 million investment from Deutsche Börse in April. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi reportedly said in May that the company was about 80% ready to list, with many now expecting a third-quarter debut.
A Crowded Field
Kraken is not the first to market with agentic tools. Gemini opened its platform and APIs to users’ AI-agent setups in April 2026, letting users connect models such as Claude and ChatGPT directly to trading accounts. Coinbase followed in June with its own agentic trading support and tools allowing AI agents to trade and pay for premium research, while unveiling “Coinbase Advisor,” which it has described as an advanced robo-advisory feature. Bitget upgraded its Agent Hub for faster AI-driven trading in March. By the time Kraken ships, it will be entering as roughly the fourth major exchange to deploy agent-centered trading.
Risks Regulators Are Still Sorting Out
Analysts flagged that the shift carries genuine risk alongside its promise. It’s reported that autonomous systems could amplify losses, and that multiple AI agents trading off similar signals could raise the odds of flash crashes, while regulators are still working out how existing trading rules apply when an AI agent is making the decision. Automation can make trading easier even as it makes responsibility harder to assign, raising open questions about consent, explainability and how systems behave when markets move quickly or liquidity thins out.
For now, Kraken maintains that a human must approve every trade — a design choice that, as CNBC noted, allows the exchange to sidestep some of the more difficult regulatory and liability questions surrounding fully autonomous trading while still competing on the same AI-driven terrain as Coinbase and Gemini.
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