Exclusive | Wall Street’s Favorite AI Startup Sets Its Sights on Wealth Management

AI has already started to take hold in the deals universe. Now a startup wants to use the technology to upend wealth management and the broader world of Wall Street.

Rogo Technologies, which is already used by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and other major investment banks, said it recently signed deals for a fresh round of strategic investments totaling roughly $30 million as it looks to deploy its artificial-intelligence agents across finance. Among its next frontiers is wealth management, with advisers at big banks among those already using its platform.

Rogo said the funding injection came from Citi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, MUFG and Société Générale. It also included co-founders of Moelis & Company and Sixth Street co-founder Josh Easterly.

The firm, founded in 2021 by former junior bankers, offers a suite of services to financial institutions, with investment banks among the clients using it for tasks like building slide decks and Excel models. Earlier this year, Rogo announced a $160 million Series D at a $2 billion valuation.

In wealth management, where Rogo said it is still in its early days, the firm wants to automate some of the same types of tasks for advisers that it has for investment bankers. Its platform can run portfolio reviews, for example, and provide analyses of client relationships that allow advisers to give more bespoke advice, Rahul Rekhi, Rogo’s president, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“We’re partnering deeply on their most important AI priorities,” Rekhi said of the firm’s bank clients.

Rogo said JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Truist were already strategic investors in the firm.

Many on Wall Street have acknowledged that AI might one day reduce the need for traditional financial roles. Other bank executives have said that AI could allow for greater productivity without necessarily cutting staff.

Earlier this year, for instance, Citi rolled out a partnership with Google to develop an AI-powered agent that can work with its wealth clients, technology the bank said would supplement human advisers rather than replace them.

On a July call with analysts, JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said there were nearly 1,000 use cases for AI, with 50 particularly important ones across areas including fraud and hedging.

“And it’s kind of just starting,” Dimon said.

Still, AI presents challenges, too. Banks have been under particular pressure to build up defenses to cybersecurity and fraud risks posed by the technology. Executives have separately had to contend with a rapid rise in costs for the tokens used for AI.

This summer, Rogo had to step in to implement guardrails after an intern at a big bank was on pace to blow through tokens at a $250,000 annualized pace.