Gabe Stengel

Stengel was an investment banking analyst at Lazard. He has recalled admiring the firm’s senior dealmakers, who strategized with Fortune 100 CEOs and navigated complex M&A; what frustrated him was never the long hours but how hard it was to become as smart and knowledgeable as they were, and he said that if he could have instantly had that insight and experience, or had more time to focus on the work they were doing, he might never have left banking. He has also said that as a banker he spent a lot of time on interesting, thoughtful work, which is why he loved the job.⁠[1][1][1][1][2]

On February 16, 2024, Stengel announced that Rogo had closed a $7 million seed round led by AlleyCorp, saying the company’s mission was to help financial institutions deploy bespoke generative AI and that its team of ex-hedge fund analysts, ex-bankers, and ex-private equity investors was building Rogo to give others “the AI powers we wish we had.” He later wrote that Rogo’s mission is to make firms and people smarter, that bankers need more than just a chatbot, and that Rogo aims to be every firm’s smartest analyst and every analyst’s most reliable teammate.⁠[3][3][3][1][1]

On March 3, 2024, The Prof G Pod aired a First Time Founders episode in which host Ed Elson and Stengel discussed the potential for AI to disrupt banking, his experience pitching a financial AI company to venture capitalists, the importance of willpower, and how to balance work and personal life. On the show, Stengel argued that bankers would be happy to have AI replace much of their PowerPoint and Excel work, but that full automation is still a long way off; he said Rogo replaces work, not people, and, citing how the number of bank tellers actually grew after ATMs spread, argued that investment banking and investing would expand as they became more efficient.⁠[4][4][2][2][2][2]

He also appeared as a panelist at an AI roundtable held by the buy-side analyst training firm Fundamental Edge as part of its Analyst Spring Training Conference, alongside Michelangelo D’Agostino, VP of Machine Learning at Tegus, and Ran Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Onwish, discussing AI’s role in fundamental investing.⁠[5][5][5]

On October 1, 2024, Stengel announced that Rogo had raised an $18.5 million Series A led by Keith Rabois at Khosla VenturesKhosla VenturesKhosla Ventures (KV) is an American venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It made heavy early bets on clean technology, became OpenAI’s first venture capital investor in 2019, and its portfolio also includes companies such as DoorDash, Block (formerly Square), Impossible Foods, and Rocket Lab.Open the full entry, with Rabois joining Rogo’s board. He later said on Invest Like the Best that he had been rejected by 40 investors before the Series A.⁠[1][1][6]

On April 30, 2025, Stengel announced that Rogo had closed a $50 million Series B led by Thrive Capital; he said that the models of the time were only slowly mastering routine tasks and that the company was still far from its ultimate vision of a true AI analyst. In August, Rogo and LSEG announced a strategic partnership, and Stengel said the company’s mission is to transform financial markets with AI, including how financial professionals uncover opportunities, develop insights, and do deals.⁠[7][7][8]

On October 8, 2025, Stengel announced that Rahul Rekhi, a former managing director at Lazard, had joined Rogo as President, saying the two had met at Lazard, where Rekhi’s strategic clarity and leadership made an immediate impression on him.⁠[9][9][9]

On January 28, 2026, Stengel announced that Rogo had raised a $75 million Series C led by Sequoia Capital and was opening a new London office led by co-founder John Willett. He wrote that when the company started, the prevailing narrative around AI in finance was about automating junior work, replacing analysts, and cutting headcount, but that this was never Rogo’s vision; the platform’s most sophisticated users use it to do their jobs better, and Rogo has become a “thought partner” for the people advising clients and executing transactions.⁠[10][10][10][10][10]

On September 22, 2026, Colossus released episode 492 of Invest Like the Best, “Building Investing Superintelligence,” in which host Patrick O’ShaughnessyPatrick O’ShaughnessyPatrick O’Shaughnessy is an investor and podcast host who has hosted the interview show Invest Like the Best since 2016, founded the early-stage investment firm Positive Sum in 2020 and serves as its CEO, and is also founder and CEO of the media company Colossus.Open the full entry interviewed Stengel. The episode covered how Rogo evolved alongside frontier models, why the last mile and the “harness” around the models matter, what happens when every portfolio manager can deploy thousands of agents against a problem, and how AI could transform the way capital is raised, assets are priced, and deals get done; it also discussed which investing skills become more valuable as AI improves, the shift from seat-based to outcome-based pricing, Rogo’s internal company knowledge system called Shrek, and why building in applied AI requires extraordinary aggression. On the show, Stengel argued that over the next two years the best investors will be figuring out how to reinvent their own firms with AI; comparing this to Jane Street taking 15 years to build a dominant franchise in market making and quantitative trading, he said today’s best investors will spend two to five years integrating AI into their work.⁠[6][6][11][6][6][6][6][11][11]

Rogo: Official website: https://rogo.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]