Intro
It started as a joke about hypocrisy
I'm Chris, one of the co-founders of Autopilot. If you're a serious investor wondering whether to publish on a platform that got famous for following a politician, you deserve the whole story, told straight. Here it is.
One thing first, because we're an SEC-registered investment adviser and I have to say it. Autopilot is the app. The actual investment advice comes from Autopilot Advisers, LLC. If you want the full legal version of anything in here, it's on our legal page.
I used to work in finance. I quit, taught snowboarding for a while, and I was on a ski slope in the middle of nowhere when I couldn't stop thinking about Nancy Pelosi. Let me explain.
Members of Congress have to disclose their stock trades. The disclosures are public. The trades were doing very well. Everyone on the internet was angry about it.
My reaction was different. What better way to highlight the hypocrisy of politicians trading stocks than to build a way to follow them? Screw it. If they're going to keep trading, why not build a way to get in on the action. So we built the Pelosi Tracker.
I'm not a political guy. I'm an everyday dude who had money sitting in a savings account, wanted to pick stocks, didn't have the time, and wasn't sure I was any good at it. The Tracker was a joke with a serious mechanism underneath it.
By the numbers
Our difference
How Autopilot got from one tracker to a marketplace
1) What the joke taught us
Three things, and they became the company.
People didn't want a table of trades. They wanted the positions in their own account, without moving their money anywhere.
The thing people were actually buying wasn't Pelosi. It was following someone with an edge instead of guessing, indexing, or handing everything to a stranger with three hundred other clients.
And if you build the pipes to follow one public record, you've built the pipes to follow any public record. Don't do the research on the stocks. Do the research on the person. That was true about a congresswoman, and it turned out to be true about everyone else.
2) The pipes got pointed at Wall Street
Hedge funds disclose their US stock positions to the SEC every quarter, so the same mechanism could follow them.
On January 3, 2023 we launched the Buffett Tracker and the Burry Tracker, Portfolios built from Berkshire Hathaway's and Scion Asset Management's public filings, with a record from that day. The Inverse Cramer Portfolio launched January 27, 2023, because people asked. Trackers for Citadel, Renaissance, Point72, Bridgewater, and Pershing Square followed.
Every one of them was Autopilot Advisers, LLC turning a public filing into a Portfolio that everyday people could follow in their own brokerage accounts, with the filing lag disclosed and the record public.
3) Then the models, then the people
On May 15, 2023 the GPT Portfolio launched: a Portfolio whose picks came from a large language model, run by a finance professor's lab, live in real accounts. Claude, Grok, and DeepSeek Portfolios followed. That was the second kind of Pilot. Not a person's filings, but a documented process.
The third kind was the one the manifesto had always been about. Late in 2024 and into 2025, investors started publishing their own Portfolios here. A Wall Street analyst turned creator with a crypto-equities Portfolio in November 2024.
A healthcare executive who invests on the side, with his flagship in December 2024 and an All Weather Portfolio in January 2025. A YouTube market educator whose actively managed Portfolio launched January 29, 2025 and became one of the most followed on the platform.
Then a data company publishing rule-based Portfolios. A former Citadel and Coatue analyst publishing his AI infrastructure thesis in November 2025. A registered adviser publishing curated Portfolios. In March 2026, trackers and model Portfolios that didn't exist a year earlier.
Pilots publish. Autopilot Advisers manages. Followers keep their own accounts. The joke had become a marketplace.
4) What it is now
An app where you can follow a hedge fund's filings, a named investor's own decisions, or an AI model's process, inside the brokerage account you already have, with a record on every Portfolio computed from actual follower accounts, and the money never moving.
The homepage lists the Pilots. The App Store calls it a curated marketplace of portfolios built by experts, AI, hedge fund trackers, and thematic strategists. The politician trackers still exist, and I'm still not a political guy.
The marketplace is the point. The best investors in the world are who we built the pipes for, whether they run a fund, a lab, a data company, or a YouTube channel.
Quote
We built the pipes to make a point. Then it turned out the pipes were the product.
Conclusion
Why the history should matter to you
Because the infrastructure was stress-tested before you arrived.
The following mechanism has run in real accounts since the trackers launched. The records were built so a stranger could trust a number with no relationship to the person behind it, which is a harder problem than trusting a famous name. And the adviser layer exists because we had to get the relationship right for followers who never met the people they followed.
A Pilot inherits all of that on launch day. You bring the decisions and a record you're willing to start. We bring the pipes, the disclosures, and followers who already know how to read a record.
What publishing here involves is in What a Pilot is, and what a Pilot isn't: how publishing a Portfolio on Autopilot actually works. How a launch works day by day is in From application to launch day: the review, the onboarding, the Pilot Portal, and the record that starts at zero.
TLDR: A joke about Congress became a mechanism. The mechanism got pointed at hedge funds, then at AI models, then at investors publishing their own Portfolios. That's the marketplace you'd be joining, and every piece of it was built and tested before you got here.
FAQ
Why should a professional investor publish on a platform that started with politicians?
Because the history is the stress test. The following mechanism has run in real client accounts since January 2023. The records were designed so strangers could trust a number without knowing the person. The adviser layer was built for followers who never meet who they follow. A Pilot inherits that infrastructure and followers who already read records, and publishes alongside hedge fund trackers and AI Portfolios, not instead of them.
How did Autopilot become a marketplace for investors?
Step by step, on the same infrastructure. Hedge fund trackers launched January 3, 2023, the Inverse Cramer Portfolio January 27, 2023, and the GPT Portfolio May 15, 2023. From November 2024, independent Pilots began publishing their own Portfolios: finance creators, a former Citadel and Coatue analyst, a registered adviser, a data company. Every Portfolio lists a Published Pilot and Autopilot Advisers, LLC as manager, and followers keep their own brokerage accounts.
Did Autopilot start as the Pelosi Tracker?
Yes. The team behind Autopilot built the Pelosi Tracker first, turning public congressional disclosures into a Portfolio people could follow in their own accounts. The same pipes were then pointed at hedge fund filings, at AI models, and at investors publishing their own Portfolios, which is the marketplace Autopilot is now. The politician trackers still exist alongside the rest.
What is the story behind Autopilot?
It began as the Pelosi Tracker, a way to follow a politician's disclosed trades in your own brokerage account, built to make a point about Congress. The mechanism mattered more than the joke: it could follow any public record. Hedge fund trackers launched in January 2023, AI-model Portfolios in May 2023, and from late 2024 investors began publishing their own Portfolios as Pilots. Today Autopilot is a marketplace where you follow a fund's filings, a named investor, or an AI process inside your own brokerage account.
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Disclosures
Since Autopilot Advisers is an SEC-registered investment adviser, we have to put disclaimers on stuff like this. They're below, and the full version is on our legal page.
© Autopilot Holdings Corporation 2026 — All rights reserved. “Autopilot” refers to Autopilot Holdings Corporation and its wholly-owned, and separately managed subsidiaries, including Autopilot Advisers, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. All investing is subject to investment risks, including possible loss of the principal invested, and past performance is not indicative of future results. View our Customer Relationship Summary and other important information at joinautopilot.com/legal.
This information is provided by Autopilot for educational and illustrative purposes only and is not a recommendation, an offer to sell or the solicitation to buy any security. Autopilot relies on information from various sources believed to be reliable, including information from Clients, Pilots and other third parties, but cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of that information. Autopilot does not provide tax or legal advice and you are encouraged to consult with professionals before making investment decisions.
Autopilot is not affiliated with, sponsored, or endorsed by the companies listed, described, or featured on its site. Company logos or trademarks used do not imply endorsement and are the property of their respective owners.
Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. You should carefully consider your investment objectives, risk tolerance, and time horizon before investing through Autopilot.
Autopilot Advisers, LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Additional information about Autopilot is available in our Form ADV Part 2A, available at adviserinfo.sec.gov or joinautopilot.com/adv.
Autopilot provides limited investment advisory services focused on Portfolio selection and suitability assessment. Our services are not intended to replace comprehensive financial planning. We recommend consulting with a qualified financial advisor regarding your complete financial situation.
This content is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment, legal, or tax advice and should not be relied upon as the basis for any investment decision. You should consult with qualified professionals regarding your specific circumstances.
Autopilot does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. You should consult with qualified tax and legal professionals regarding your specific circumstances.
Autopilot does not hold client assets. All investments are held at the brokerage firm you select and connect to Autopilot. Your brokerage firm is responsible for trade execution, custody, and reporting. Autopilot is not responsible for your broker-dealer’s services, fees, or execution quality.
Autopilot’s services depend on technology systems, third-party APIs, and internet connectivity. System outages, API disruptions, or connectivity issues may temporarily affect service availability or trade execution timing.
Client account holdings are designed to track the Portfolio you’ve selected, but your actual holdings and performance may differ from the Portfolio due to execution timing, market conditions, brokerage capacity constraints, fractional share availability, and other factors outside Autopilot’s control.
For Portfolios inspired by publicly disclosed trading activity, there may be a delay between when a Pilot executes a trade and when that trade becomes publicly available and is incorporated into the Portfolio. This timing delay may affect the suitability or performance of trades when executed in client accounts.
This page is for prospective Pilots. Pilot compensation is described as stated in Autopilot's public help center; the revenue split is not published and no level of revenue is promised. The conflicts described are from Autopilot's own disclosures. Third-party Pilots are independent and are not investment advisers to followers; Autopilot Advisers, LLC is the manager of every Portfolio. Nothing here is a performance claim or a recommendation.
