Sep 22, 2026 · 1h 6m
AI turns finance’s workflows into a competitive frontier
Gabe Stengel - Building Investing Superintelligence - [Invest Like the Best, EP.492]
The episode examines whether financial firms will gain an advantage from AI by adopting better models or by rebuilding the systems around them.
- 1Rogo’s strongest early use case is transaction-oriented finance, where intensive research and workflow integration create immediate value.
- 2The decisive advantage may come from an AI harness connecting models with financial data, internal systems, compliance, and audit trails.
- 3AI could pressure established investment firms to reinvent themselves as enterprise value shifts toward software, data, and institutional systems.
Don't miss
Stengel describes how Rogo’s internal AI system, Shrek, connects organizational goals, metrics, and workflows as the company scales.
The brief
Gabe Stengel argues that AI could reshape investing faster than most firms expect, with consequences spanning research, dealmaking, capital raising, pricing, and execution.
Rogo’s evolution tracks successive waves of model capability, but Stengel emphasizes that useful products also require financial data, workflow integration, compliance, and auditability.
The company’s strongest early application is transaction-oriented finance, where groups of agents can support intensive research while human judgment remains difficult to automate fully.
Stengel’s broader thesis is that the AI harness matters as much as the model: infrastructure, interfaces, and operational context determine whether enterprise systems become genuinely useful.
The conversation ends on a harder constraint than model quality: AI raises the execution bar, rewarding companies that can attract talent, capital, and trust while moving quickly.
What was said on this episode
32 statements · 27 positive · 4 negative · 1 neutral
Leading investors will reinvent their firms and themselves within two years.
“in two years, the best investors are going to be figuring out how to reinvent their own firms and reinvent themselves.”
Listen at 2:08
Top investors will spend two to five years integrating AI into their work.
“the world's best investors today are going to spend the next two to five years figuring out how to integrate AI into what they do.”
Listen at 2:20
Applying AI across the investment lifecycle will be leading investors’ biggest challenge.
“figuring out how to apply AI into the investment lifecycle is the biggest challenge over the next five years for every great investor.”
Listen at 2:45
Advanced AI models can perform nearly any junior investment or banking task.
“the models just became capable of basically anything a junior investment professional or junior banker was doing”
Listen at 4:41
Rogo users report major productivity gains and hundreds of hours saved monthly.
“People all day are saying, hey, this is transforming the way I work. I'm saving hundreds of hours a month.”
Listen at 5:18
Rogo can return a deck markup in 20 minutes instead of two days.
“returning that markup in 20 minutes as opposed to. two days”
Listen at 6:15
Hedge-fund portfolio managers could use 10,000 agents to debate investment ideas.
“Imagine if every PM at a hedge fund had 10,000 agents”
Listen at 7:01
Public equities may be AI’s best application because its data is available.
“public equities is the best application of AI because all the data is available”
Listen at 8:14
Rogo’s systems and infrastructure will be invaluable to public-equity investing.
“I have extreme conviction in the fact that the underlying systems and tools and infrastructure we have built will be invaluable to that market.”
Listen at 10:56
Rogo can build a very large business by focusing on dealmakers.
“I can build a huge, huge business just concentrating where I am today.”
Listen at 11:54
A finance-focused AI company can reach $5 billion in revenue through deep workflow infrastructure.
“we can get to $5 billion in revenue by going deep across those things and creating the systems, the systems of record that help manage them.”
Listen at 18:24
Claude’s harness and presentation were substantially better than OpenAI’s comparable offering.
“the harness and the way that it was presented from Claude was far better.”
Listen at 20:13
Applied AI businesses need complex industries adjacent to their core market.
“the industry itself needs to be adjacent enough to the core market”
Listen at 21:53
AI agents currently struggle to compact memories across many conversations.
“Compaction. So it's if you have 100 conversations with a single agent, how does it make sure that it's actually remembering the right things”
Listen at 23:55
AI businesses should transition from seat pricing to usage-based and outcome-based pricing.
“every business needs to go through two different pricing revolutions. You need to move to some sort of usage based and then you need to move to some sort of outcome based.”
Listen at 26:46
Rogo is only 1% through its roadmap, with most capital-markets innovation ahead.
“we are 1% of the way into our product roadmap. 99% of the innovation for capital markets is in front of us.”
Listen at 27:54
Online platforms deliver 40–50% of mortgages.
“Now, 40 to 50 percent of mortgages are just delivered online by platforms like Rocket Mortgage.”
Listen at 28:53
Capital-market transactions and fundraising will undergo substantial innovation.
“I think there's going to be a huge amount of innovation in how companies transact, how companies raise capital, how companies raise debt.”
Listen at 28:58
AI could reduce KKR’s portfolio-company sale assessment from months to minutes.
“I think it'll take five minutes for KKR to figure out, can I sell this portfolio company to another sponsor? Not five months.”
Listen at 29:18
AI-driven capital markets will become more transparent, liquid, efficient, and active.
“markets are going to be more transparent, more liquid, more efficient. And there's going to be a whole bunch more activity.”
Listen at 29:31
Rogo aims to let agents transact on users’ behalf.
“I can actually transact for you.”
Listen at 30:41
AI outputs need auditability more than perfect accuracy to be usable.
“I think it's actually more important to be auditable than it is to be accurate.”
Listen at 34:40
AI will completely transform the world.
“AI is going to completely transform the world.”
Listen at 39:09
Finance catalyzes human progress and innovation.
“Finance is a domain that is the catalyst for all human progress and innovation.”
Listen at 39:26
Rogo could become a $500 billion business transforming capital markets.
“we're the category leading player who has the best shot on goal to not just be the $100 billion business to do it, but the $500 billion business that completely transforms capital markets.”
Listen at 39:42
Faster access to capital markets can accelerate innovation.
“If you're able to speed up the rate at which entrepreneurs and company founders and individuals can tap into capital markets, you can accelerate all innovation.”
Listen at 41:40
Hundreds of AI-native finance businesses will attack incumbent models.
“there's going to be an opportunity for hundreds of AI native disruptors, AI native investment firms, AI native investment banks to attack my business model.”
Listen at 52:35
Top investment firms and banks will derive 90% of value from software, data, and systems.
“in 10 years, the world's best investment firms, best banks will have 90% of their enterprise value, not in people, but in software and data and systems.”
Listen at 55:12
AI should reduce private-market opacity caused by unstructured data.
“AI should fix that.”
Listen at 57:42
Several private-market transaction categories can become fully automated.
“for a lot of sponsor-owned businesses or things like secondaries or private credit or GPLP secondaries, I do think it can be fully automated.”
Listen at 58:17
Founders should believe a 5% chance of becoming a $100 billion business is plausible.
“You need to believe that that 5% likelihood that you can be in $100 billion business is likely.”
Listen at 59:53
AI has raised the execution standard for competing businesses.
“the execution bar is higher than it's ever been to to compete.”
Listen at 1:01:32
Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.