FCA Warning List: every AI trading entry we could find
Thirteen AI-branded trading platforms appear on the UK Financial Conduct Authority's public Warning List, covering at least fifteen separate domains. The list as a whole held 19,069 entries when we checked in October 2026. This page records the AI-branded ones we located, the domains registered against each, where the same brands appear in other regulators' databases, and how to search the list yourself — because the list changes constantly and a copy of it, including this one, goes out of date the week it is published.
Published 8 October 2026 · AI Trading Book Editorial · Reading time about 13 minutes
- 13 AI-branded entries across at least 15 domains, found October 2026.
- 19,069 entries on the full list, which the FCA adds to daily.
- Four of the thirteen use the word "Quantum" — one brand family, four listings.
- The FCA states absence proves nothing: a firm not on the list "may still be unauthorised or be a scam".
- Search the domain as well as the name. One brand regularly runs on several.
What is the FCA Warning List?
The FCA Warning List is a public, searchable record of firms and individuals the Financial Conduct Authority is concerned are working without its permission in the UK. It is free, requires no account, and anyone can search it by name or by website address.
The list has been running since 2 April 2016 and held 19,069 entries when we checked in October 2026, displayed across 762 pages at twenty-five entries per page. The FCA's guidance page carried a last-updated date of 30 June 2026.
Each entry states that the named firm is not authorised by the FCA and may be targeting people in the UK. Most entries record a website address; some also record a postal address, telephone number or email, with the FCA cautioning that those details may be incorrect, may change, or may belong to an unrelated business whose identity has been borrowed.
What a listing actually means
A listing is the FCA's statement that a firm appears to be providing or promoting financial services without permission. It is not a criminal conviction and not a finding of fraud. The practical consequence is spelled out on every entry: if you deal with the firm, you have no access to the Financial Ombudsman Service and no protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
That second point is what matters to an individual. Recovery of money from an unauthorised firm is, in the FCA's own framing, unlikely.
The October 2024 payment protections
Entries note that money sent to a fraudster on or after 7 October 2024 may be covered by protections introduced by the Payment Systems Regulator. This is relevant if you have already paid: the date of your payment affects what routes remain open, which is why speed matters more than certainty when you first suspect a problem.
The AI-branded entries
These thirteen entries carry artificial-intelligence branding and appear on the FCA Warning List as at October 2026. We reproduce them because people search for these names individually, and because finding nothing when you search is not the same as there being nothing to find.
| Name as listed | Domain(s) recorded | Brand family |
|---|---|---|
| AI Chain Trader | ai-chaintrader.net | Chain |
| Chainlink AI Trade | chainlinkaitrade.com | Chain |
| OptiTrader AI | optitraderia.pro | Opti |
| Optimus Ai Trade | optimusaltrd.com | Opti |
| Trader AI | traderai-app.pro | Trader AI |
| Trader AI | trader-ai-platform.org | Trader AI |
| Trader AI Intal | traderaiintal.pro, trader-ai-intal.net | Trader AI |
| Ai Trader Bot | ai-traderbot.net | Bot |
| Quantum AI | recorded by the FCA | Quantum |
| Quantum Asset AI | recorded by the FCA | Quantum |
| Quantum Trading AI.net | quantum-trading-ai.net | Quantum |
| Quantum AI Platform | quantumaiplatform.com | Quantum |
| AI Trading Hub | recorded by the FCA | Hub |
This is a count of what we located, not an official total. The FCA does not categorise its entries by sector or technology, so no published figure exists for AI trading platforms specifically, and our search was by name pattern rather than exhaustive. The real number is higher.
Four families, thirteen listings
The most useful thing in Table 1 is not the names but the right-hand column. Thirteen entries resolve into six brand families, and two families account for more than half of them.
The naming lexicon
Across the thirteen entries, a small vocabulary recombines: AI, trader, trade, trading, quantum, chain, opti, bot, asset, platform, hub. Almost every name is two or three of these words joined together.
That matters practically. If you are checking a platform whose name is a recombination of those words, you are not looking at a coincidence of industry vocabulary — you are looking at the output of the same naming process that produced the thirteen entries above.
Why one brand needs several domains
Trader AI appears twice under the identical name on two unrelated domains, then a third time as Trader AI Intal with two more domains of its own. The Quantum family runs across at least four variations.
Domains are cheap and disposable; a brand that has been listed simply continues on the next one. This is why the second search in any check must be the domain, not the name — the name you were given may be new while the operation behind it is not.
The same names in other regulators' databases
Several of these entries appear in more than one jurisdiction, which is the strongest form of corroboration available in this area.
| Name | Also recorded by | Reference and date |
|---|---|---|
| AI Chain Trader | CNMV, Spain — via IOSCO I-SCAN | Warning 39317, 14 July 2025, aichaintrader.com |
| Quantum Trading AI.net | IOSCO I-SCAN | Warning 39954 |
| Quantum AI Platform | IOSCO I-SCAN | Warning 41769 |
| Quantum AI | ASIC, Australia | Media release 24-180MR — named as a fabricated brand |
The Quantum AI row is the notable one. ASIC documented it as a fabricated brand in its own enforcement communications, and the FCA lists four variations of the same word. A name recorded independently by regulators on two continents is about as close to settled as this subject gets.
IOSCO I-SCAN, and why to use it
IOSCO I-SCAN is the International Securities and Commodities Alerts Network, an aggregated database of warnings published by securities regulators worldwide. Each record carries a warning ID, the national authority that issued it, the publication date and the category of concern.
The FCA itself directs consumers to the IOSCO list for overseas firms. This matters because a platform targeting UK readers may have been listed first in Spain, France or Germany — the CNMV entry for AI Chain Trader predates much of the English-language coverage of that name.
What BaFin's warning adds
Germany's financial regulator BaFin warned consumers about roughly twenty near-identical online platforms simultaneously, all claiming automated trading of financial instruments using artificial intelligence, and all advertising a minimum investment of 250 euros.
Twenty platforms warned about at once is not twenty businesses that happened to resemble each other. It is one template deployed twenty times, and it explains why the thirteen FCA entries cluster into six families rather than standing as thirteen separate ventures.
The 250 signature
The fixed minimum deposit is the single most portable recognition signal in this category. It recurs at 250 in euros, dollars and pounds across unrelated brand names, which makes it a feature of the template rather than a commercial decision by any individual operator.
A platform asking for exactly this figure, described as a starting balance or trial amount, belongs to the pattern whether or not its name is on any list yet.
Why "not on the list" is not reassurance
The FCA states this itself, and it deserves emphasis because it is the reasoning error that causes most harm: a firm that does not appear on the Warning List may still be unauthorised or be a scam.
The mechanism is straightforward. The list records firms the FCA has become aware of, which happens after enough reports accumulate and are processed. A platform launched last month on a fresh domain has not had time to generate those reports. It is, by construction, in the window before listing — and the clone-family model exists precisely to live inside that window.
How to search the Warning List yourself
Four steps, roughly five minutes. Do them against the live list rather than this page.
- Search the exact brand name on the FCA Warning List, spelled as the platform spells it.
- Search the domain separately, including the extension. Entries often record the domain rather than a trading name.
- Search partial words. If the name is "QuantumTrade AI", also search "quantum" alone — family members surface that way.
- Search IOSCO I-SCAN for anything not UK-registered, and your own national regulator if you are outside the UK.
Subscribe rather than check repeatedly
The FCA publishes new warnings daily and offers both an email alert and an RSS feed. If you are monitoring this space — as a journalist, compliance officer or researcher — subscribing is more reliable than periodic manual searching, because the interval between a listing appearing and you noticing it is itself a risk window.
The register, not the list, is the positive test
Searching the Warning List tells you whether a firm has been reported. Searching the Financial Services Register tells you whether a firm is authorised. Only the second can produce a positive finding, and most checking advice conflates them.
| Resource | Answers | Cannot answer | Operator |
|---|---|---|---|
| FCA Warning List | Has this name been reported as unauthorised? | Whether anything unlisted is safe | FCA |
| FCA Firm Checker / Financial Services Register | Is this firm authorised, and for what? | Whether a clone is impersonating it | FCA |
| IOSCO I-SCAN | Has any securities regulator worldwide warned about this? | Whether a national list is complete | IOSCO |
| ASIC Connect | Is this entity licensed in Australia? | UK or EU status | ASIC |
| NZ Financial Service Providers Register | Is this provider registered in New Zealand? | Whether registration equals authorisation to advise | NZ Companies Office |
| FMA warnings and alerts | Has the NZ regulator warned about this? | Platforms not targeting New Zealand | FMA |
Check the permissions, not just the entry
A firm appearing on the register is not automatically cleared to do what it is offering you. Authorisations are specific: a firm permitted to arrange deals is not thereby permitted to manage your portfolio. Read the permissions on the register entry and compare them with what the platform proposes to do with your money.
Clone firms: when the register itself is the trap
The FCA describes a clone as a copy of a genuine firm. A scammer takes the name, firm reference number and sometimes the registered address of a properly authorised business, then supplies different contact details — a different phone number, a different email, a lookalike domain.
Checking the reference number alone will not catch this, because the number is real. The check that catches it is contacting the firm using the details on the FCA register, never the details the platform gave you.
Four things this list cannot tell you
- Whether an unlisted platform is legitimate. Covered above; this is the most common misreading.
- Whether a listed platform is criminal. The listing records an authorisation concern, not a conviction.
- Whether a tool works. Authorisation is about conduct and permission, not performance. A fully authorised firm can sell a tool that loses money.
- Who operates a platform. Entries record names and domains, not ownership.
The wider numbers
The thirteen entries here sit inside a much larger documented pattern, recorded by other regulators with their own figures.
| Figure | Value | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Total FCA Warning List entries | 19,069 | FCA, checked October 2026 |
| Scam websites removed in 2025 | 11,964 | ASIC 26-063MR, 8 April 2026 |
| Year-on-year increase in takedowns | 90% | ASIC 26-063MR |
| Scam sites removed since 2023 | more than 25,000 | ASIC 26-063MR |
| Celebrity-impersonation scam losses | AUD 7.4 million | ASIC 26-195MR, 17 August 2026 |
| Australian investment scam losses, 2025 | AUD 837.7 million | National Anti-Scam Centre |
| Near-identical AI platforms warned about at once | approximately 20 | BaFin, Germany |
| Minimum deposit advertised across them | EUR 250 | BaFin |
The two January 2024 advisories
Two US regulators addressed this category directly on the same day. The CFTC's Office of Customer Education and Outreach published a customer advisory titled "AI Won't Turn Trading Bots into Money Machines" on 25 January 2024, and FINRA published "Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Investment Fraud" on the same date.
The simultaneity is informative: two bodies with different remits concluded independently that AI-branded trading claims had become a distinct consumer-protection problem rather than a variation on existing investment fraud.
If you find your platform on the list
- Deposit nothing further, including any fee described as necessary to release funds.
- Contact your bank or card issuer today. Reversal routes close with time, and the payment date determines which protections apply.
- Preserve evidence — screenshots, correspondence, payment references, the domain, any phone numbers.
- Report it to the FCA on 0800 111 6768 or through its online form, and to Action Fraud.
- Refuse recovery offers that come to you. Unsolicited approaches promising to retrieve lost funds for an upfront fee are a second fraud aimed at the same victim.
Full detail on reporting routes in Australia and New Zealand is on our scams page, and the general verification procedure is on our platform checking page.
How we maintain this page
This record was compiled in October 2026 by searching the FCA Warning List for AI-related name patterns and cross-referencing IOSCO I-SCAN. We intend to re-check it periodically and will log any change on the corrections page, with the update date shown at the top.
Two cautions about using it. The FCA adds entries daily, so this table is a snapshot and the live list always governs. And entries can be amended or removed — for example where a clone warning concerned a genuine firm being impersonated — which is another reason to verify at source before relying on any name here.
This is not an argument that AI trading tools are inherently fraudulent
Established platforms exist, charge openly for software, name their company, publish pricing and promise no returns. Our platforms page records pricing for nine of them, captured from vendor pages with dates.
What separates them from the thirteen names above is not the technology. It is the combination of a promised outcome with an absence of verifiable authorisation. Whether any AI tool, authorised or not, beats a passive benchmark is a different question entirely, covered on our evidence page.
What we could not establish
- An official count of AI trading entries. The FCA does not categorise its list by sector. Data not found.
- Median lag between a platform launching and being listed. Data not found.
- The number of distinct operations behind the six brand families. Shared templates imply consolidation; attribution is not public. Data not found.
- Recovery rates for money deposited with listed platforms. Data not found.
Conclusions
Search the list, but use it correctly. A hit ends your enquiry; a miss tells you almost nothing. The FCA says so itself, and the thirteen entries above were all absent from the list at some point.
Search the domain, not only the name. Thirteen listings cover at least fifteen domains, and one brand appears three times. The name you were given is the most disposable part of the operation.
Treat the naming lexicon as a signal. When a platform's name is a recombination of AI, trader, quantum, chain, opti, bot and platform, that is the output of a process, not a coincidence.
The register answers the question the list cannot. Authorisation is the positive test, and permissions matter as much as presence. Contact any firm using the register's details, never the ones you were given.
If you have paid, act today rather than tomorrow. Payment date determines which protections remain available, and the one thing never to do is pay more to get your money out.
Frequently asked questions
What is the FCA Warning List?
A public, searchable list of firms and individuals the Financial Conduct Authority is concerned are working without its permission in the UK. It held 19,069 entries when we checked in October 2026. It is free, needs no account, and the FCA offers a daily email and an RSS feed of new additions.
How many AI trading platforms are on the FCA Warning List?
We found thirteen AI-branded entries in October 2026, covering at least fifteen distinct domains. That is a count of what we located, not an official total: the FCA does not categorise entries by sector, so there is no published figure for AI trading specifically.
Which AI trading platforms appear on the list?
AI Chain Trader, Chainlink AI Trade, OptiTrader AI, Optimus Ai Trade, Trader AI on two separate domains, Trader AI Intal, Ai Trader Bot, Quantum AI, Quantum Asset AI, Quantum Trading AI.net, Quantum AI Platform and AI Trading Hub. The list changes constantly, so search it directly.
Does being on the FCA Warning List mean a platform is a scam?
The listing states the firm is not authorised by the FCA and may be providing or promoting financial services without permission. That is the FCA's statement, not a criminal finding. In practice it means you would have no access to the Financial Ombudsman Service and no FSCS protection if things went wrong.
My platform is not on the Warning List. Is it safe?
No. The FCA states plainly that a firm missing from the list may still be unauthorised or be a scam. The list records firms the FCA has become aware of, which happens after reports accumulate. Absence is the expected state of anything recently launched.
How often is the FCA Warning List updated?
There is no fixed schedule. The FCA says it adds firms as soon as possible, and publishes additions daily in practice. You can subscribe to a daily email of new warnings or an RSS feed rather than checking manually.
What is a clone firm?
A scammer impersonating a genuinely authorised firm, using its name, registration number and sometimes its real address, while giving different contact details. The FCA describes a clone as a copy of a genuine firm. Checking a firm reference number alone will not catch it; the contact details must match too.
How do I check a platform that is not UK-based?
Use IOSCO I-SCAN, the international alerts database that aggregates warnings from securities regulators worldwide. The FCA itself directs consumers there for overseas firms. A platform absent from the UK list may be listed by Spain's CNMV, France's AMF or Germany's BaFin.
Why does one brand appear several times?
Because the same brand operates on several domains at once. Trader AI appears twice on two different domains, and a third time as Trader AI Intal with two more. On our count the thirteen entries cover at least fifteen domains, which is why searching the domain matters as much as searching the name.
Is Quantum AI on the FCA Warning List?
Yes, in several forms: Quantum AI, Quantum Asset AI, Quantum Trading AI.net and Quantum AI Platform all appear. ASIC separately documented Quantum AI as a fabricated brand in media release 24-180MR, making it one of the few names recorded by regulators on two continents.
What should I do if I find my platform on the list?
Stop, and do not deposit anything further. If you have already paid, contact your bank or card issuer immediately, since recovery depends on how recent the payment is. Report it to the FCA on 0800 111 6768 and to Action Fraud. Never pay a fee demanded to release your funds.
Can a firm be removed from the Warning List?
Entries can be amended or removed, for instance where a firm demonstrates it was wrongly identified or where a clone warning concerned a genuine firm being impersonated. This is one reason to consult the live list rather than any copy, including this page.
Does the FCA Warning List cover crypto platforms?
Yes, the FCA publishes crypto-related alerts alongside other warnings, and many AI-branded trading platforms present themselves as crypto products. Search the name and domain regardless of how the platform describes its asset class.
Compiled by AI Trading Book Editorial, the editorial function of this site. Table 1 reproduces entries located on the FCA Warning List in October 2026 by searching AI-related name patterns; each FCA entry states that the named firm is not authorised by the FCA and may be targeting people in the UK. We make no independent finding about any named platform beyond recording that these public listings exist. The brand-family grouping, the naming-lexicon analysis and the listing-lag schematic are our own analysis. The entry total of 19,069 is as displayed by the FCA when we checked. Listings change daily; the live list governs. Published 8 October 2026. Changes are logged on the corrections page.
Sources
- FCA — Warning List and guidance on unauthorised firms; 19,069 entries displayed, guidance page last updated 30 June 2026, first published 2 April 2016; daily email and RSS feed; statement that a firm missing from the list may still be unauthorised or be a scam; clone firm described as a copy of a genuine firm; FCA Firm Checker; telephone 0800 111 6768; Payment Systems Regulator protections for payments on or after 7 October 2024.
- FCA Warning List individual entries — AI Chain Trader (ai-chaintrader.net), Chainlink AI Trade (chainlinkaitrade.com), OptiTrader AI (optitraderia.pro), Optimus Ai Trade (optimusaltrd.com), Trader AI (traderai-app.pro), Trader AI (trader-ai-platform.org), Trader AI Intal (traderaiintal.pro, trader-ai-intal.net), Ai Trader Bot (ai-traderbot.net), Quantum AI, Quantum Asset AI, Quantum Trading AI.net (quantum-trading-ai.net), Quantum AI Platform (quantumaiplatform.com), AI Trading Hub.
- IOSCO I-SCAN — warning 39317, AI Chain Trader, Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores, Spain, 14 July 2025; warning 39954, quantum-trading-ai.net; warning 41769, Quantum AI Platform.
- BaFin — consumer warning covering approximately twenty near-identical platforms advertising AI-driven automated trading at a minimum investment of 250 euros.
- ASIC — 24-180MR, naming Quantum AI as a fabricated brand; 26-063MR, 8 April 2026, 11,964 scam websites removed in 2025, a 90% year-on-year increase, more than 25,000 removed since 2023; 26-195MR, 17 August 2026, AUD 7.4 million in celebrity-impersonation losses.
- National Anti-Scam Centre — AUD 837.7 million in Australian investment scam losses, 2025.
- CFTC Office of Customer Education and Outreach — customer advisory "AI Won't Turn Trading Bots into Money Machines", 25 January 2024.
- FINRA — investor advisory "Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Investment Fraud", 25 January 2024.
Informational research only. Nothing on this page is financial, legal, tax or investment advice. Warning-list entries are reproduced as published by the relevant authority and reflect that authority's statement rather than an independent finding by us. Listings change frequently and entries may be amended or removed; always consult the live list before relying on any name recorded here.