The AI Brokerage Quietly Taking on Schwab, Fidelity & Vanguard

Company Positioning & Market Strategy

• Public is explicitly targeting the top 25% of wealth holders in the US, aiming to capture the "great wealth transfer" where 85% of existing brokerage assets are set to be inherited by this group.
• The company distinguishes itself from "mass America" fintech by rejecting a "money super app" model, arguing that users with assets under $100k live paycheck-to-paycheck and require monetization via loans or speculation (credit cards, prediction markets).
• Public positions itself as an "investing super app" designed to monetize assets through compounding and financial services fees rather than predatory lending or high-frequency speculation.
• The platform competes directly with traditional incumbents (Charles Schwab, Fidelity, E-Trade, Vanguard, Merrill Lynch) and new brokers, noting that Schwab has doubled in value in the last five years despite disruptions.
• Revenue is reported to be doubling every year, with the platform handling billions of dollars in assets and trading volume for millions of users.
• The average age of Public users is 38, described as "mid-millennial" and highly self-directed due to early access to financial literacy via social media and fractionalized asset classes.
• The company recently underwent a strategic pivot called "Level Up" in 2022, shifting focus from democratization for all to serving the top quartile to ensure consistent asset compounding.

Product Evolution & AI Integration

• Public launched "agents for investing," a product designed to automate workflows, trading strategies, and money movements, allowing users to express intent rather than click buttons.
• The "Generated Assets" product allows users to prompt AI to create custom indices based on specific criteria (e.g., "founder-led, global, no debt, US-based") and backtest them against the S&P 500 before investing.
• Best-performing generated assets on the platform include thematic indices like "defense and weapons manufacturers," which reportedly surged 350% in a single month.
• The "social feed" feature, which originally defined the brand, has been largely cannibalized by AI capabilities, as automation replaces the need for social discovery of investment ideas.
• Financial advisors are being deconstructed into three functions: grunt work (automation), advice (opinions on data), and emotional support; Public's AI agents now handle the first, with the belief that AI will soon replace the other two.
• The platform is moving toward a "full-service" model enabled by AI, aiming to replicate the proactive relationship of traditional brokers who formerly called clients with investment ideas.
• Future account types include Trust Accounts and Entity Accounts (for small businesses), specifically designed to facilitate wealth transfers and inheritance management.
• Public utilizes "Generative Assets" as a unique asset class, distinct from traditional stocks or ETFs, allowing for dynamic portfolio construction based on user prompts.

Operational Structure & Leadership

• The company operates with a co-CEO structure (Nico and Yannick), a common model in Europe but unusual in the US, intended to provide balanced decision-making and shared emotional load.
• Yannick leads engineering, product design, and productivity, while the other co-CEO leads growth and broader strategy.
• Global offices include a headquarters in New York, a back-end engineering hub in Copenhagen (led by the Danish co-CEO), and a remote customer experience hub in the Raleigh-Durham area utilizing licensed talent.
• The co-CEOs recently incorporated, with one having become a US citizen three weeks prior to the interview.
• The company raised $400 million to date to fund the development of an "agentic brokerage."

Market Outlook & Macro Trends

• The business model is designed to be resilient across market cycles: low rates drive active trading revenue, while high rates shift monetization toward interest-bearing products like bonds and treasuries.
• Public predicts a significant disruption in the financial advisory industry due to an aging advisor demographic (average age ~60) clashing with a financially literate, self-directed younger generation.
• There is skepticism regarding the current "super app" trend for fintech, with the argument that building for mass market users inevitably leads to predatory monetization models.
• The company views prediction markets as a powerful tool for security and hedging specific corporate events (e.g., Tesla energy output) but criticizes the industry's stretch into sports betting and entertainment as short-sighted.
• Public advocates for the tokenization of real assets (real estate, art) on a unified blockchain to solve liquidity fragmentation, though they argue tokens alone do not create liquidity.
• The company supports the trend of private companies going public to increase market health and retail access, citing the benefits of retail investors holding founder stock (as seen with Robinhood).
• Upcoming IPOs, such as SpaceX, are viewed as potential catalysts to reopen the IPO window, though the company warns against relying on single "unicorn" events for market vitality.

Ethical Concerns & Future Risks

• One co-CEO expressed a grim view of the near-term AI future, predicting a massive increase in wealth disparity before an "oasis" of automation is reached.
• The interviewee stated that "Elon's going to own all the robots," leading to a power disparity that will result in a less safe society with increased reliance on armed security rather than doormen.
• The speaker advocates for Universal Basic Income (UBI) and wealth redistribution not just for financial support but to provide "purpose" to displaced workers to prevent social unrest.
• Public emphasizes safety in AI agents by separating reasoning (AI) from execution (deterministic code), ensuring that automated workflows do not "hallucinate" or deviate from user instructions.