# AI is changing more than Wall Street's workflows. It’s creating a whole new career path. > Source: > Published: 2026-08-10 09:03:01+00:00 Young bankers are facing a new choice. Wall Street has traditionally offered a clear, if grueling, career path for junior employees: get an internship, work in investment banking for two years, and decide whether to stay in banking, move to the buy side, or get an MBA. AI is now disrupting not only the [day-to-day nature of the work](https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-banks-ai-strategy-jpmorgan-goldman-citi-bofa-2026), but also potentially opening a new fork in the finance career road, as some young financiers flock to AI startups for financial firms. Jared Swansen, 27, made the jump to Rogo, one of those startups, in January. He's since forgotten all the Excel shortcuts he used as a banker and investor,** **now that the hours he spent typing away are instead spent on the phone with people he used to sit across from, teaching them how to cut the drudgery out of dealmaking. "The holy grail was to go to the buy side. That was everyone's dream," Swansen, who spent around three years at Bank of America before moving to a small buy-side firm, said. "It was exactly what I had hoped, doing all the analysis and working on the different transactions that I hoped to when I was starting out my banking career. But it was hard to not see what was happening with AI." [Rogo was founded](https://www.businessinsider.com/rogo-pitch-deck-seed-fintech-ai-2024-2) in 2021 by former investment bankers in their twenties** **from Lazard and JPMorgan and has secured a $2 billion valuation after its Series D fundraising round in April. It touts domain expertise as a big draw, since the workforce is predominantly split between engineers and former financiers like Swansen. According to employees' LinkedIn profiles, they hail from Evercore, Goldman Sachs, and Citi, among other firms. Rogo's leadership doesn't expect or want all bankers or private-market investors to suddenly jump ship to [join a startup](https://www.businessinsider.com/15-most-promising-ai-powered-fintech-startups-according-top-vcs-2024-11#rogo-14) — that reality would erode their client base. Recruiters who work in finance aren't seeing a mass exodus among younger employees, though they said that AI is becoming an increasingly attractive option for the more entrepreneurially minded. Yet leaving the well-charted, lucrative finance road comes with its risks. "It comes down to how common and how broad-based this is. It's hard to quantify," Anthony Keizner, co-founder of recruiting firm Odyssey Search Partners, said. Rogo has more than 300 clients, including Lazard, Moelis, and Tiger Global, and automates much of the tedious work, like making slide decks, producing research, and building models. Users can email instructions to its AI agent, Felix, the same way they do colleagues. There are other players in the vertical AI-for-finance space. [Competitors like Hebbia](https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-startup-hebbia-wall-street-investment-banking-work-demo-2025-10) and Farsight AI also promise to speed up work, and large AI labs, [including Anthropic](https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ai-agent-tool-wall-street-finance-bank-2026-5) and OpenAI, are [hiring bankers ](https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-hiring-expert-investment-banking-job-pay-experience-2026-7)to work on services for financial firms. Rogo is something of a tech-finance mashup — former bankers walk around in jeans and enjoy daily free lunch, while engineers grind out finance hours in conference rooms named "Dimon" and "Soros." When asked whether they work at a finance or tech company, the four employees interviewed for this piece paused, before Elsa McLean, the head of talent, eventually settled on "an AI company." McLean, 30, said she's stopped having to educate potential recruits about what the Rogo does, and has seen a "massive uptick in inbound applications" starting in the first half of this year. The company has doubled its headcount in the past year to more than 150, and plans to double it again within the next 12 months. It has offices in New York and London, with plans to open locations in San Francisco and Singapore. Hebbia was founded in 2020 and has clients in investing, banking, and the broader deal ecosystem,[ including law](https://www.businessinsider.com/legora-founder-harvey-legal-tech-ai-platform-competition-2026-3). It's also seen rapid growth:** **the startup has around 200 employees, compared to just shy of 100 a year ago. Tom Navin, the head of people, said that monthly inbound applications have nearly tripled this year to an average of 7,000, and around 60% of employees have a background in finance. Swansen "caught the bug" for the finance industry during his senior year of high school, and expected to [chart a traditional career](https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-jobs-college-finance-clubs-admissions-process-cutthroat-2025-5). He first discovered Rogo while working as an investor at Acacia Research, and though leaving wasn't easy, the idea of being at the center of technological transformation was more exciting. Rachel Friedman, 27, wasn't letting go of her preconceived future when she came to Rogo as one of eight employees and the first woman. She spent more than two years at Jefferies as an investment banker and knew she didn't want to stay in finance, though she's glad she started there. For her, Rogo was more about joining an interesting, fast-paced place where she could play any part, with the added perk of swapping her trousers for the occasional sweatpant. Starting at Rogo now, with its big-name investors and global offices, isn't quite the same gamble. "My impression is that the risk profile of candidates has pretty significantly changed over time," Friedman said. "Now, everyone is comfortable with the idea that every financial institution will adopt AI. The risk is around betting on the right one. We feel really good about that, obviously." Swansen said that by the time he joined Rogo, "it felt like probably the bigger risk was doing nothing when the whole world was changing." In some ways, working at Rogo isn't all that different from working at a top financial firm, and Friedman said most people don't see it as a departure from finance. The [cumulative hours are similar](https://www.businessinsider.com/junior-bankers-work-hours-shiber-centerview-wall-street-lawsuit-2026-2), though employees generally have more control over when they work. "I work a lot, but I'm never scared at 6 p.m. on a Friday that something is going to blow up and destroy my weekend," Swansen said. "I think I could probably end work every day three hours earlier if I wanted to. But because we're growing really fast, there are just cool opportunities everywhere." (Friedman, Swansen's boss, is worried he works too much, since he's usually up until around 1:00 a.m.) Those who come from the world of high finance leverage their old connections when covering and securing clients,** **including Jack Maroni, 27, [an MBA intern](https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-summer-interns-ai-banks-2026-5) who spent four years at KKR before attending Harvard Business School. He said he's introduced Rogo to friends who are still on the buy side. Swansen has found that his background in banking and private equity is key to keeping clients happy with Rogo, since he understands the details of their workflows. The work ethic is also similar, employees said, since many came from a world of 80-hour workweeks and, to quote Maroni, "built the muscle around grinding." The paycheck, however, isn't necessarily as familiar. At Rogo, a "forward-deployed banker" in New York would earn a base salary between $115,000 and $180,000, plus potential equity and bonus, according to a job posting. Candidates are expected to have at least three years of investment banking experience at a top firm. Rogo declined to provide further details on its pay packages. Second-year associates at top firms can make up to $400,000 all-in, Meridith** **Dennes, managing partner at Prospect Rock Partners, said. This year is proving especially profitable, as [banks report record profits](https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-earnings-jpm-citi-goldman-bofa-wells-markets-outlook-2026-7). None of the recruiters said they've seen hordes of young people leave their jobs because of anxiety about AI — banking is, Dennes said, "always going to be a stable choice." "It is challenging to try and pull the top investment banker who's being paid an [incredibly high bonus](https://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-banks-private-equity-bonus-compensation-ai-2026-5), being well taken care of. It's going to be really difficult to pull that person out unless they have a real passion for AI," said Brianne Sterling, who leads the investment banking practice at recruiting firm Selby Jennings. One key question, Keizner said, is how much equity employees get and its potential value, since cash compensation alone probably isn't enough to lure people to startups like Rogo. An equity grant in a company that succeeds could be "as lucrative, if not more lucrative, than being on a traditional finance path," he said. Navin, the head of people at Hebbia, said the compensation packages can require "a very different framing mentally" for former bankers or investors, who are more used to cash than equity. Hebbia offers bonuses for forward-deployed banking and investing roles, but they're "a lot smaller" than in traditional finance, partly because of the inclusion of equity. More than anything, Friedman said, people struggle to give up the structure of finance. They're used to knowing what it means to do well, what the promotion path looks like, exactly how their pay will change over the years. "Convincing them that it'll be okay in a place where there's far less structure and your path might look different than your neighbor's — having that conversation with folks, some people definitely have to get over that mental barrier that unstructured things can be good," she said. *Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at *__atecotzky@insider.com__* or Signal at alicetecotzky.05. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device;* __here's our guide to sharing information securely__*.*