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SoFi puts AI strategy-building tools in the hands of retail investors

SoFi puts AI strategy-building tools in the hands of retail investors

New Capabilities

SoFi launches Composer, letting everyday users automate trading strategies with plain-language instructions

Yesterday: SoFi launches Composer by SoFi

Overview

For years, automating a trading strategy meant writing code or paying for a hedge fund. On June 23, 2026, SoFi put that capability inside a consumer app, where a user types an investment idea in plain English and lets software run it.

Composer by SoFi lets people build, backtest, and automate rules-based strategies without coding. It also opens a library of more than 2,000 strategies built by other users. The launch pushes SoFi deeper into a contest with Robinhood to automate everyday investing.

Why it matters

Tools that hedge funds guarded for decades now sit in a phone app, letting ordinary investors automate trades they once placed by hand.

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Key Indicators

2,000+
Community strategies
Pre-built strategies SoFi users can copy and automate at launch.
14.7M
SoFi members
Reported in SoFi's first-quarter 2026 results, up 35% from a year earlier.
$1.1B
Q1 2026 adjusted revenue
SoFi's quarterly adjusted net revenue, up 41% year over year.
2020
Composer founded
Composer Technologies started in 2020 before SoFi bought it.

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People Involved

Organizations Involved

Timeline

January 2020 June 2026

6 events Latest: Yesterday
Tap a bar to jump to that date
  1. SoFi launches Composer by SoFi

    Latest Launch

    SoFi opens the AI-powered platform to retail users, with plain-language strategy building, backtesting, automated execution, and 2,000-plus community strategies.

  2. Robinhood adds AI trading agents

    Competition

    Robinhood lets customers open dedicated trading accounts and deploy AI agents to trade stocks, raising the stakes for rivals.

  3. SoFi's Composer acquisition closes

    Corporate

    FINRA filings show SoFi completing its purchase of Composer Securities. Deal terms were not disclosed.

  4. Composer adds options selling

    Product

    Composer expands beyond stocks and crypto, broadening the kinds of automated strategies users can run.

  5. Composer adds 'Trade With AI'

    Product

    Composer lets users describe strategies in plain language, a step toward the natural-language building SoFi later markets.

  6. Composer founded

    Origin

    Benjamin Rollert, Ananda Aisola, and Ronny Li start Composer to let ordinary investors build automated, rules-based strategies without code.

Historical Context

3 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.

2008–2010

Robo-advisors reach retail (2008–2010)

Startups Betterment and Wealthfront launched software that automatically built and rebalanced diversified portfolios for small investors. The tools handled work that human financial advisors had charged fees to do.

Then

The startups gathered billions in assets from younger investors who wanted low-cost, hands-off investing.

Now

Charles Schwab and Vanguard launched their own robo-advisors, and automated portfolio management became a standard feature across the industry.

Why this matters now

Composer follows the same path: take a service once reserved for paid professionals and turn it into self-serve software, then watch incumbents copy it.

2013–2019

Robinhood and the end of trading commissions (2013–2019)

Robinhood launched commission-free stock trading in a mobile app aimed at first-time investors. Larger brokerages first dismissed it, then felt the pressure as users moved.

Then

Millions of new investors opened accounts, drawn by zero fees and a simple app.

Now

In 2019, Schwab, Fidelity, and E-Trade cut stock commissions to zero, reshaping how the whole industry made money.

Why this matters now

It shows how one company lowering the barrier to a trading feature can force the rest of the market to match it, the dynamic now in play with AI strategy tools.

October 1987

Portfolio insurance and the 1987 crash (October 1987)

Many institutions used an automated, rules-based strategy called portfolio insurance that sold stock-index futures as prices fell. On October 19, 1987, those programmed sales piled on as markets dropped, and the Dow fell 22.6% in a single day.

Then

Regulators introduced circuit breakers that halt trading during sharp declines.

Now

The crash became a lasting case study in how automated strategies can amplify market moves when many follow similar rules at once.

Why this matters now

Composer automates rules-based strategies for a much larger pool of users. The 1987 episode is a reminder of what can happen when many automated strategies act in the same direction.

Sources

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