00:00 Speaker A
The company strengthening its footprint as it accelerates product innovation and AI adoption. Yahoo Finance’s executive editor Brian Sozzi sits down with eToro CEO Yoni Assia for the closer look at what the company says is quote pivotal moment for financial services.
00:26 Yoni Assia
We are building now products in eToro at 5 to 50 times faster than we used to build. So when we talk about uh, you know, the eToro super app of being able to enable any type of financial services, uh eventually to our customers across the globe in many different jurisdictions where financial services might be very different types of products, whether it’s, you know, the savings markets in Australia or the insurance uh market in France or the ISA uh market in the UK, suddenly uh we have capabilities to run faster, to develop faster for our customers. And we’ve done more than that, we’ve actually opened the platform to enable our pro-investors, now 5,000 of the smartest investors uh in the world, I would say, and definitely on the Etoro platform, to actually build their own apps uh and publish those apps to our customers. So it’s not only about our 1500 people in eToro being able to run faster and develop faster, it’s about giving those capabilities uh of launching new products and innovating to our customers as well.
02:26 Brian Sozzi
Yoni, I I’m glad you brought up the uh the apps. I am really intrigued by this app store. I don’t think enough people are focusing on this app store, what it can mean for eToro. What what type of apps do you see coming and how might they reinvent your platform?
02:45 Yoni Assia
So, so first of all, there are already uh 800 app builders out of the out of 5,000 pro investor already, 800 started building apps, uh about a thousand apps are in pipeline. I’ll just give you a couple of examples. Uh, uh somebody wrote an app called Invest with Titans. It looks at your portfolio, it brings uh uh Kathy Wood, uh uh Warren Buffett, I think Benjamin Graham, uh and some other Titans, you can actually select the Titans. They are trained on those Titans personalities and how they invest and they start commenting about your portfolio. Um and they gave you sort of their insights uh from their point of view on your portfolio. And the funny thing is the guy who built the app actually also created a toggle between like making it polite or making it aggressive. So you have like a bit you have uh Warren Buffett and Kathy Wood arguing about Bitcoin there or Tesla. So, and this is an example of one app. Uh we have others that actually uh created uh swap activities. So the ability to swap one asset to another. So why sell your Tesla uh and buy Google if you actually want to do the same transaction of just swapping between them. So we’re unleashing a lot of these capabilities. Some of them like are, you know, quantitative trading capabilities that I would tell you two years ago are unimaginable than a year ago I would tell you, okay, now I built my Quantum because I have access to AI so they can do it and now suddenly our investors uh can build their own quantitative trading strategies. So it really expands everything you can do on eToro over time and those apps will be published for the rest of the customers in eToro uh to be able to use them.
04:59 Brian Sozzi
Yoni, I I was a former, I think I’ve told you this before, I’m I used to be a stock analyst for 10 years and I am blown away by the thing by the things you’re telling me. I can’t believe we’ve arrived at this point. I mean, how do you think this technology will sh I mean, I still remember writing research reports by hand and like playing in like Excel spreadsheets. I mean, how do you think this this technology changes the next decade for the retail investor?
05:43 Yoni Assia
I I think over the next decade and probably much sooner, every uh uh every retail investor is going to basically have something you would compare to a hedge fund and a family office in their hands. So they’d have quants, research analysts, uh all agents uh measuring 24/7 what’s happening in the markets, understanding your interests, your personality, by the way, also your expenses, uh your goals. Uh so you’ll have a, you know, an an army of family office and hedge fund uh quants working for you. Um all driven by AI. Uh AI will become, you know, the best tool a retail investor can imagine. The gaps that we started bridging between institutional investor access back in 2007 to retail investors by lowering the costs, by making it simpler to access. Now that bridge is, it’s not only about the access, it’s the tools. a retail investor is going to have the same tools like the most sophisticated hedge funds in the world and capabilities uh like uh what the wealthiest families in the world have in their family office. So I think that’s where the market is going to consolidate all of that to be agent-led and agents are going to be your family office.
07:44 Brian Sozzi
I am I am truly blown away by this moment. Um if I’m right, I just want to switch gears to the crypto front um because I think you are a level-headed person in this space. If I’m right, you got involved in crypto in 2013, you’ve seen a lot of different market cycles. What is your, I guess, what’s your message to the retail investor out there that is concerned about they they bought Bitcoin around 100,000, 90,000, 80,000 and now it’s well below. Like what do you what do you say to them?
08:31 Yoni Assia
Hoddle. Hoddle. Never give up. Um I’ve been in this market since 2011 actually. My biggest mistake always uh throughout the cycles was uh uh selling too early. Luckily, I already did that mistake. I think on uh Apple shares and Amazon in 2005 or six. So at least I learned uh that hard lesson early on. I think uh crypto is a cyclical market. It is amazing by the way, how cyclical it is. We launched Bitcoin in 2013, then in 14 it crashed from 1200 to 150, then we saw another all-time high in 2017 crashing, then again in 2018, another all-time high in 2021, then crashing again in 2022, another all-time high in 2025, then crashing again in 2026. A four-year cycle, uh that is on the clock, uh that is in my view, uh buy a potential buying opportunity to buy the dip. I think in a world where AI manages uh most of the money in the world. Uh you should uh, you know, AI is going to trade crypto much more easily. Uh he will understand crypto better. He does understand probably crypto today already better uh uh than traditional money. Um so I I think, you know, we’ve always taken a long-term view. We’ve seen the markets and the markets are cyclical and volatile in crypto. Uh but in times like these are when uh their opportunities arise. I think it’s a Buffett statement uh when you know, when there’s blood in the street uh is where the buying opportunities are.
11:24 Brian Sozzi
Lastly, uh Yoni, this 24/7 trading that you’re that you mentioned on the earnings call. When does that launch and how does that change the business?
11:39 Yoni Assia
Today.
11:40 Brian Sozzi
Today?
11:41 Yoni Assia
For real.
11:42 Brian Sozzi
Wow.
11:43 Yoni Assia
Today. So, we launched 24/7 Gold today. Actually a couple of days ago, announced it today. But uh the, you know, what we’ve seen which is I think remarkable is stocks moving to 24/5 last year and gradually more and more and more stocks being 24/5 and the entire market infrastructure in the US sort of facilitated in in building that. What we’re seeing over the weekend is actually uh prices being formed in crypto markets. So prices in crypto markets now are forming gold and silver prices and other commodities and even stocks over the weekend. And if you have price for those stocks, you can trade those stocks and commodities uh uh on a Saturday and Sunday as well. So, you know, because we are and have always been both pioneers on crypto and on equities trading and securities trading, uh we’ve been able to basically copy crypto markets into capital markets to enable 24/7 trading and I do expect to see many more assets moving 24/7 uh in 2026.
13:41 Brian Sozzi
Always good to see you. Uh, eToro CEO Yoni Assia, we’ll uh, look forward to talking to you and following all these AI developments, man. We’ll talk to you soon.
14:02 Yoni Assia
Always a pleasure.