Artificial intelligence may soon usher in a new era of entrepreneurship one where businesses are built and run by a single individual, backed by tokenized infrastructure. That’s the vision laid out by Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on Tuesday at the Bitcoin Conference 2025 in Las Vegas.
Tenev likened the future of AI-powered startups to the early days of Bitcoin, created and launched anonymously by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. “That’s Bitcoin, in a sense, right? It’s the personal brand of Satoshi Nakamoto, backed by technology, Tenev pointing to how one person using a transformative idea and codebase could spark a trillion-dollar financial ecosystem.
Tenev predicted that the next generation of innovators will harness AI to build companies with minimal human labor, leveraging blockchain to tokenize their projects and raise capital. He envisioned a future where single-person companies operate like tradable assets, accessible to investors on the blockchain.
This convergence of AI and blockchain, according to Tenev, is breaking down the traditional barriers to entry. The ability to create value with fewer resources and lower costs is reshaping how businesses are conceived, launched, and financed. One of the things that AI is making possible is more and more value being created with fewer and fewer resources.
Tenev’s remarks come as Robinhood continues to deepen its footprint in the digital asset space. The trading platform has expanded its crypto offerings significantly, now supporting a broad range of tokens including meme coins and has seen a 50% jump in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, largely due to surging interest in crypto trading.
The company is also pushing for regulatory clarity. Robinhood has submitted a proposal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) advocating for a unified national framework for tokenized real-world assets. The proposal argues that digital tokens representing traditional assets like stocks or bonds should be treated as legal equivalents to their conventional counterparts a move that could simplify compliance and broaden participation in decentralized finance.
Bitcoin’s legacy continues to ripple across the broader financial and technological landscape. Tenev sees the story of its solo creator as a blueprint for the future, one where AI-augmented entrepreneurs can launch tokenized projects that operate and scale with minimal overhead while still achieving global impact.
As blockchain use cases multiply from Walmart’s food supply tracking systems to digital art, gaming, and tokenized banking tools Tenev’s vision suggests that the intersection of AI, decentralization, and tokenization may define the next frontier in business and innovation.
