Interactive Brokers Lets Eligible Clients Authorize AI Trade Orders

Interactive Brokers announced IBKR Autonomous Trading on Oct. 21, letting eligible clients authorize connected AI platforms to submit supported orders without approving each one individually. The feature moves the firm’s AI tools from preparing trade instructions for client review to placing authorized orders.

The system can identify opportunities across a global pool of more than 75,000 listed stocks, options and exchange-traded funds. Orders are submitted from an AI Partition funded with cash transferred from a client’s main account. Clients do not need to open another account or make an outside deposit.

Access is limited to individual, non-margin accounts. Joint, retirement, advisor-managed, organizational and Lite accounts are excluded. To qualify, clients must first complete at least 10 trades worth $100 or more each over two weeks in Review & Approve mode, which requires them to review and approve AI-generated orders. An eligibility test is listed as coming soon.

The connection list includes ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Perplexity and other platforms that support the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Interactive Brokers began offering AI portfolio analysis and trade-instruction preparation through Claude on June 1, then added ChatGPT and Grok on June 22. In that earlier workflow, clients reviewed and approved instructions before submitting orders themselves.

The limited rollout began before the public announcement. At an Oct. 15 earnings call at 4:30 p.m. ET (20:30 UTC), Interactive Brokers Founder and Chairman Thomas Peterffy said, “We started a very limited rollout of the autonomous trading.” Peterffy said about 3,000 clients had been invited in the preceding several days and that eligibility would expand over the following weeks.

Clients can revoke an AI platform’s access at any time, but revoking it does not automatically cancel pending or partially filled orders. AI systems may make errors or submit unintended orders, and clients remain responsible for orders in their accounts.