The signal: agents are becoming something to verify, not just something to build
In the last week of September 2026, three developments pointed the same way. Baselayer raised a $35 million Series A to extend its identity network from businesses to the AI agents that transact on their behalf.1 Robinhood put a product called Robinhood Agent on its HOOD Summit list.2 And Cboe said Robinhood would be the first retail broker to offer a new category of binary contracts tied to company performance figures.3 For anyone tracking applied AI, the news is that the money is flowing to the trust layer around agents, and not only to the agents themselves.
One caveat belongs up front. Our dossier names Robinhood Agent but says nothing about what it does, how it works or what model powers it.2 We will not guess. What we can describe is the surrounding infrastructure, the funding, and the financial base of the company shipping it.
Baselayer: the problem is trust, not capability
Baselayer, a San Francisco AI startup that helps financial institutions verify businesses and assess fraud risk, raised $35 million to expand its identity technology to AI agents. M13 led the round, with Picus Capital participating.4 The company also launched an Agentic Identity Suite on the same day, September 22, 2026.5 Participants in the round included Torch Capital, Afore Capital and individual investor Matt Thompson of Socure.5
The pitch rests on a problem practitioners will recognise. Jonathan Awad, quoted by Crunchbase News, put it this way: "Agents spin up and they spin down. How can you trust this random one-task agent?"4 He also argued that unless agents can show they act for legitimate people or businesses, "agents will just get blocked everywhere."4
This frames agent adoption as a gatekeeping problem. A bank or merchant has no history with a short-lived agent, so it has no basis to let it act. Baselayer's bet is that identity checks, already used on businesses, can be extended to software.
Awad also described how slow this market is. Relationships with financial institutions typically take 12 to 18 months to establish, and large merchant partnerships can take up to 24 months.4 He said the company has "essentially streamlined 10 years' worth of selling into two years."4 That is a company's own account of its sales progress, and the dossier contains no independent measurement of it. Still, the timeline tells you something: agent identity needs agreement from regulated institutions, and those move slowly.
A sceptical investor's view of AI in finance
The enthusiasm has limits, including among investors. Sean Jacobsohn, a Norwest partner, was blunt about where AI does not belong in finance: "You don't want AI doing calculations because it is not good at math. There are certain workflows it can handle where it doesn't produce precise numbers. But when you need precision, accuracy and calculations, you can't rely on AI for that."6
This matters for anyone building finance agents. It points to a split in which language-heavy work goes to models and exact arithmetic stays in deterministic systems. On software markets he said it would be "very hard to disrupt the core products of Workday, ADP, SAP, UKG and Dayforce," but "easier to disrupt some of their secondary products."6 He also sees "a potential opportunity to disrupt NetSuite and Sage," with disruption "downmarket" first.6 These are one investor's views, not measured outcomes.
Robinhood: the financial base behind the product push
Robinhood is the best-documented company in this story, and its numbers are checked against SEC filings. Revenue was $1.865 billion in fiscal 2023, $2.951 billion in 2024 and $4.473 billion in 2025.7 That is roughly 2.4 times the 2023 level, which we calculated from the three verified figures.
The profit swing is larger. Net income went from a loss of $541 million in 2023 to a profit of $1.411 billion in 2024 and $1.883 billion in 2025.8 Earnings per share moved from -$0.61 to $1.56 to $2.05.8 Operating cash flow was less smooth, at $1.181 billion in 2023, a negative $157 million in 2024 and $1.638 billion in 2025.9 A company that swings that much on operating cash flow is not yet a steady earner.
For a technology reader, the most telling line is research and development: $349 million in 2023, $323 million in 2024 and $355 million in 2025.10 Revenue more than doubled over the period, but R&D spending stayed roughly flat. We make no claim about what that says about Robinhood's AI strategy, because the dossier does not address it. It does show that growth came from the existing platform, not from a bigger engineering budget.
Cash is the balance-sheet line reported most often. It stood at $4.261 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.11 It was $5.012 billion in Q1 2026 and $5.362 billion in Q2 2026, up from $4.162 billion in Q2 2025.11
Where reporting diverges. Two records give Robinhood's cash on September 30, 2025 as $4.331 billion and as $4.3 billion. The SEC-checked figure for Q3 2025 is $4.331 billion.11 The gap looks like rounding, but we use the SEC-checked number.
The event-contract push, and the AI link
Cboe announced at Robinhood's third annual HOOD Summit in Houston that it plans to launch binary contracts tied to company key performance indicators, expected in October 2026 and subject to regulatory approval.3 The products are tied to 23 companies.3 Cboe will charge no fees through the end of 2026, subject to regulatory review, and Robinhood will also offer them with no fees through year-end.12 Steve Quirk said earnings contracts "give retail investors another tool to inform their strategies and offer an even more precise way to trade on anticipated company KPIs."3
The same summit list included perpetuals, 24/7 trading, earnings predictions and Robinhood Social alongside Robinhood Agent.2 Our reading is that these threads connect: always-on markets and automated participants make identity and fraud screening more valuable. That is our inference, not something any source in the dossier states.
The cautionary note: Kalshi
On September 20, Benoît Dubosson posted on X about a pattern of roughly $5,500 trades on Kalshi's ether perpetuals. CNBC found that nearly half of that day's dollar volume came from trades between $5,495 and $5,505.13 The dossier does not explain the pattern, and we do not offer a cause. It shows that a new, thinly traded product can look unusual from the first day, which is relevant as retail access widens. Kalshi is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Sequoia Capital has invested in it.14
How much to trust the sources
We measure how well each source's claims have held up. For the Cboe and Robinhood announcement, a press release distributed through NewsEOD, 56% of 5,217 checked claims held up.3 For the Crunchbase News pieces, 51% of 39 checked claims held up.4 Both are modest, and the Crunchbase sample is small. The funding details and quotes above are the publication's own reporting or the companies' statements, and we have not independently confirmed them. The SEC figures are the only data here that have been checked against the filing itself.
Consolidation is also running alongside the funding, with Circle–Tazapay, Grab–Atome, Socure–Fravity and Adobe–Rilo named in our topic summary.15 We have no deal terms for any of them, so we treat them only as a pattern.
What to watch
- The KPI contract launch. It is expected in October 2026 and still needs regulatory approval, and the zero-fee period is also subject to regulatory review.312
- What Robinhood Agent actually does. Until the company says, the product is a name on a list.2
- Whether banks and merchants adopt agent identity. Given the 12 to 24 month timelines Awad described, adoption will be slow.4
- Robinhood's operating cash flow. The negative 2024 year shows it can swing sharply.9