According to Forbes, companies like Robinhood, Cash App, and Public.com are investing billions to address financial cognitive load through AI solutions. Cash App recently launched MoneyBot, an “always-on assistant” that analyzes spending patterns and suggests actions like automatic savings transfers. Public.com announced its “Agentic Brokerage” with three pillars—Research, Creation, and Action—that has already seen investors create over 2,500 custom indices through natural language prompts. Rallies.AI, a portfolio tracker built by a husband-and-wife team, processed nearly 50,000 user questions in just a few months. Trading 212’s experimental AI analysis continues being used despite user complaints about inaccuracy, showing demand for financial guidance outweighs concerns about perfection.
The real problem isn’t money—it’s mental energy
Here’s the thing: we all know we should optimize our finances. We should rebalance portfolios, sweep cash into high-yield accounts, cancel unused subscriptions. But the friction isn’t financial—it’s mental. Calculating whether your portfolio beat the S&P requires hours with spreadsheets that nobody volunteers for on a Saturday morning. So cash sits uninvested, allocations drift, and we pay what amounts to a cognitive friction tax.
AI as your financial thinking partner
The real innovation here isn’t better returns—it’s reduced decision fatigue. Cash App’s MoneyBot doesn’t just show you data; it suggests actions. Public.com’s “investing co-pilot” lets you create custom indices through natural language. These tools position themselves as companions rather than calculators. And users are responding—people will use inaccurate AI tools because sharing the mental load matters more than perfect accuracy. One user even connected an $8 million portfolio to Rallies.AI. Basically, making financial decisions alone is emotionally exhausting in ways spreadsheets can’t capture.
Who’s liable when AI gets it wrong?
Now for the uncomfortable question: what happens when AI gives bad financial advice? If an OpenAI model tells you to buy a stock and you lose money, who’s responsible? Both Public.com and Cash App have engineered their products to keep users firmly in control—every decision gets human approval. But the liability question remains largely unanswered. We’re outsourcing mental work to algorithms, but the legal framework hasn’t caught up.
Bringing Wall Street automation to Main Street
The most fascinating shift is how these tools democratize strategies that were previously exclusive to institutional investors. Automatic rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, custom index creation—these required teams of analysts and programmers. Now you can tell an AI to “trim 10% of my bank stocks and rotate into tech if the Fed cuts rates.” That’s powerful. And it explains why OpenAI acquired portfolio tracker Roi and why Perplexity says finance is their fastest-growing category. Everyone senses the opportunity in eliminating financial cognitive load.
