Bank calls for ‘kill switch’ to protect market from AI traders

The potential for AI agents to trade directly in financial markets is attracting increasing attention from investors — and from regulators.

- Ben Zaranko

EquiLibre Technologies, a firm established by a trio of former Google DeepMind researchers in Czechia, has taken methods used to train poker algorithms and applied them to the stock exchange. The startup, valued at $500m after a recent funding round, told TechCrunch that its AI agents — which devise and execute trading strategies without human supervision — have “a perfect record of zero negative months since inception”. In other words, they have made a profit each and every month.