John Willett, Gabe Stengel and Tumas Rackaitis, founders of Rogo Technologies
Photographer: Ben Sklar/Bloomberg
Junior Bankers Sick of Grunt Work Build $2 Billion AI Tool to Do the Job
Rogo, started by young bankers around a kitchen table in 2021, just won a multibillion-dollar valuation
In a cramped Manhattan apartment in late 2021, three young investment bankers often toiled into the wee morning hours, crunching away on spreadsheets and rearranging logos on slide decks, while one of their roommates was taking a risk.
Gabriel Stengel had just quit his job at Lazard Inc. to team up with fellow Princeton University computer science graduate John Willett, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker, so the pair could work fulltime around Stengel’s kitchen table on something else: coding an artificial intelligence tool that would take over that dealmaking drudgery.