"No One Writes Code Manually Anymore at Deriv": CEO Rakshit Choudhary

Deriv chief executive Rakshit Choudhary has set out how deeply the online broker's "AI-first" strategy runs inside the company, saying its client-facing applications are now built entirely with AI tools and that it aims to automate 75% of its manual workflows by the end of 2026. Choudhary joined Deriv as a quantitative analyst intern more than fifteen years ago, moved through strategy and operations, became chief operating officer and then co-CEO, and has run the company alone since 2025.

He said automation now covers operations across HR, finance, compliance, marketing, product and engineering. "No one writes code manually anymore at Deriv," he said, declining to score the company against rivals making similar claims. On headcount, Choudhary said AI "is surely going to impact jobs," adding that staff get access to AI tools and weekly training and that some previously redundant roles have been absorbed by automation. Deriv has hired more than 100 AI engineers who also help colleagues outside engineering. He noted the debate extends beyond Deriv: NAGA Group has said AI handles most of its chat-based support and lets it run marketing with roughly 20% fewer staff, though whether such moves reflect genuine restructuring or cost cutting remains contested.

Building on top of models

Deriv is not developing or fine-tuning its own foundation models, Choudhary said, describing the broker as a consumer of the market like everyone else. It routes tasks to whichever model fits best, switching between providers including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Its proprietary layer is an in-house "internal intelligence system" holding business context, decision history and what has worked, plus an internal marketplace where staff can turn skills into runnable AI agents. "If you're asking where the real IP sits, it isn't in the model," he said.

Client-facing AI remains narrower: API and MCP access for external developers, round-the-clock multilingual AI customer support, and TradersView, launched this year, which provides live AI-generated market commentary. Choudhary said TradersView never tells users what to buy or sell, carries disclaimers in every market it launches in, and is not measured by trading volume.

On liability when an AI agent executes a bad trade through MCP, he argued the model is not new, pointing to close to a decade of API access and clients running algorithms on Deriv. Responsibility, he said, lies in transparency: dashboards, open positions, live profit and loss and risk management tools. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority ordered a firm to cease operations and return client funds earlier this year after automated screening failed to catch risks a manual review would likely have flagged.

Choudhary also rejected the idea that Deriv is a latecomer to multi-asset trading, saying it has offered stocks and digital assets for close to a decade alongside options and synthetic indices. This year it has added hundreds of stock CFDs, including major US names tradeable around the clock, and expanded its metals offering. The company has built AI and data hubs in Malta, Dubai and Malaysia, and its priority for 2026 and into 2027 is efficiency built on a stable foundation.