The research says the average founder of America’s fastest-growing startups is 45. These New Yorkers didn’t wait. A first look at the AI founders who could make Social Life Magazine’s Hamptons 40 Under 40.

At a glance  
Who Three New York AI companies led by founders we could confirm are under 40
The companies Runway, Rogo, Hebbia
Combined recurring revenue More than $300 million a year (company figures and research-firm estimates)
What they sell to Film and advertising, Wall Street banks, investment firms
Part of New York’s AI Gold Rush, the prequel to the Hamptons 40 Under 40

The founder who should be 45

In 2019, three economists from the Census Bureau, MIT and Northwestern published a finding that annoyed a lot of people in hoodies. They studied the fastest-growing new companies in America, the top 1 in 1,000, and found that their founders averaged 45 years old. Experience in the industry, not youth, was the best predictor of success.

So when a New Yorker under 40 builds an AI company with real revenue, they are beating the odds. They are doing at 28 or 36 what the data says usually takes until the mid-forties. That is precisely the kind of person Social Life Magazine wants on its first Hamptons 40 Under 40, and these are the first ones we found.

One rule for this list: we include only founders whose ages we could confirm from public records or reporting. Several of the most successful AI founders in the city may well qualify. If you are one of them, tell us.

Cristóbal Valenzuela, Runway

Born in 1989 in Chile, Runway co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela studied economics and business and then design at Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago, where he later taught. He came to New York for NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts and co-founded Runway there in 2018 with classmates Anastasis Germanidis and Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz.

Runway’s AI video tools were used on the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Amazon and Robinhood are among its daily enterprise customers, according to Germanidis. The company passed $200 million in annual recurring revenue in September 2026, roughly doubling in five months, and expects to reach $350 million by year’s end, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. It was valued at about $5.3 billion in February. TIME named Valenzuela one of the 100 most influential people in AI in 2023, and NYU honored him at its 2026 Tisch Gala at Cipriani South Street.

What makes him a New York story is the starting point. Runway didn’t come from a computer science lab. It came from an art program, built by people who wanted better tools for filmmakers. The customers came to them.

Runway is also no longer just a video company. In the second quarter of 2026 alone it added more than $40 million in new recurring revenue, opened offices in Tokyo and London in June and Paris in July, and in September released a developer platform and a new version of its “world” models, software that learns how the physical world behaves from video. Valenzuela has described AI video as the prequel to that bigger ambition. For a company that started as tools for filmmakers, that is a remarkable expansion of scope in under a decade.

Gabriel Stengel, John Willett and Tumas Rackaitis, Rogo

The Rogo founders were named to Forbes’ 2026 30 Under 30 list in finance, which makes them the youngest people in this story. CEO Gabriel Stengel studied computer science at Princeton, worked as a software engineer at MongoDB and then as an investment banking analyst at Lazard. COO John Willett, a fellow Princeton graduate, banked at J.P. Morgan and Barclays. Tumas Rackaitis rounded out the founding team.

They built Rogo for the job they knew best: the junior banker up at 3 a.m. pulling comparable companies into a pitch book. Rogo’s AI does that work in minutes, with sources a managing director can check. Forbes reported revenue of about $2 million in 2024 and more than $15 million in 2025. In July 2026 the company told Axios its recurring revenue grew more than 50% in a single quarter, and research firm Sacra estimates it at about $53 million. Rogo has raised about $340 million, including a $160 million round led by Kleiner Perkins in April.

The lesson is the oldest one on Wall Street. Know the business before you try to sell to it. Stengel and Willett had sat in the analyst chairs Rogo now serves.

Rogo has been building for scale. It hired Joe Xavier, formerly chief technology officer at Grammarly, as its CTO, and says its products are used by more than 40,000 bankers and investors across hundreds of banks and investment firms, according to IT Brief. For three founders still in their twenties, that is a client list most bankers spend a career trying to build.

George Sivulka, Hebbia

Hebbia founder and CEO George Sivulka finished a Stanford math degree in under three years, added a master’s in applied physics and started a PhD before leaving it at 23, according to Forbes, to build the company in 2020. Based in New York, the company makes AI that reads through mountains of financial documents for investment firms and banks.

Hebbia was tracked at about $50 million in recurring revenue in September 2026, and Sivulka said its third quarter was the biggest in the company’s history, with new recurring revenue tripling from the quarter before, according to ARR Club. Like Rogo, it sells to the most demanding customers in the city: people who are paid to find the one number everyone else missed.

The details of that quarter say more than the headline. Hebbia reported keeping more than 95% of its revenue from existing customers, a fivefold jump in daily users, and five new banks signed in a single week at the start of the fourth quarter, according to ARR Club. It also launched an AI teammate called Max and new research agents. In a market where customers try a tool and walk away, a 95% retention rate is the number that matters.

Why does New York keep producing young AI founders?

Three things come together in New York that rarely meet anywhere else: paying customers, specialized talent and capital.

The customers are the city’s industries. Banks, landlords, studios, brands and professional firms spend heavily on exactly the work AI now does faster. A young founder can test an idea on a real customer in the same week, sometimes in the same building.

The talent is unusually mixed. The New York State Comptroller counts about 40,000 workers with AI-related skills in the New York area, more than 2,000 AI startups and 35 unicorns. Many of those workers didn’t start in computer science. Valenzuela came through an arts program at NYU. Stengel and Willett came through investment banking. That mix of industry knowledge and technical skill is what lets a 28-year-old build something a bank will actually buy.

The capital has followed. New York startups raised $8.88 billion in the second quarter of 2026, the best second quarter in the city’s history, with about half going to AI companies, according to AlleyWatch. We follow that money in Why the Smart Money Is Leaving Palo Alto for Park Avenue.

Is under 40 too young to win?

Statistically, it is early. Beyond the finding that the fastest-growing startups’ founders average 45, Northwestern economist Benjamin Jones studied the ages at which people produced great inventions and Nobel Prize-winning work. About 42% came from people in their 30s and 40% from people in their 40s. Only about 7% came from people 26 or younger. Over the 20th century, the average age of major achievement rose by roughly eight years, largely because it takes longer to master a field.

That is what makes the founders on this page interesting. They found ways to compress the learning curve, by working inside the industry first, by building with older partners, or by choosing a problem they understood personally. The research doesn’t say young founders can’t win. It says that when they do, it is usually because they borrowed experience from somewhere.

What the under-40 winners have in common

The obvious answer is talent, but the more useful answer is that each one borrowed the experience the data says they shouldn’t have yet.

  • They picked one New York industry and went deep. Runway sells to studios and ad agencies. Rogo and Hebbia sell to finance. None of them tried to be everything to everyone.
  • Each worked inside the industry first, or built with people who had. Stengel and Willett were bankers. Valenzuela was a designer and filmmaker before he was a CEO.
  • They sell to customers who already have budgets. A bank already pays analysts. A studio already pays for visual effects. AI replaces a line that exists, so the sale is easier.

That last point is the thread running through this whole series. In New York’s AI Gold Rush, we argue that the city’s AI winners are the ones collecting money, not just raising it. The under-40s prove it can happen early, if you choose the right customer.

What will the Hamptons 40 Under 40 look for?

The founders above set a high bar, but the list is not limited to venture-backed AI companies. Social Life Magazine’s editors will weigh four things for every nominee:

  • Results you can verify: revenue, growth, clients, funding, awards or work people can see.
  • A real New York or Hamptons connection: living, building or spending meaningful time here.
  • Momentum: where someone is headed matters more than where they started.
  • A story worth telling: every honoree will be featured, so we want people with something to say.

AI is one road onto the list. Finance, real estate, fashion, medicine, law, hospitality and the arts are others. What every honoree will share is that they did at 30-something what most people do at 45.

Who we are still looking for

This is a starting list, not a finished one. We’re especially interested in the under-40 founders nobody has written about: the person who rebuilt a family business around AI, the agency owner who doubled her clients without doubling her staff, the broker whose AI answers every inquiry at midnight. They are harder to find than venture-backed founders, and they are exactly who the Hamptons 40 Under 40 is for.

If Runway could start as an art-school project and become a $5 billion company in eight years, the next name on this list could be working in a Brooklyn apartment tonight. We’d like to meet them before everyone else does.

Frequently asked questions

Who are the youngest successful AI founders in New York?

The Rogo founders, Gabriel Stengel, John Willett and Tumas Rackaitis, were named to Forbes 2026 30 Under 30 list. Hebbia founder George Sivulka left a Stanford PhD at 23 to start his company in 2020. Runway co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela was born in 1989.

What is the average age of a successful startup founder?

A study by economists from the Census Bureau, MIT and Northwestern found that founders of the fastest-growing new US companies averaged 45 years old. Prior experience in the same industry was the strongest predictor of success, which makes very young winners the exception.

How do I nominate someone for Social Life Magazine’s Hamptons 40 Under 40?

Social Life Magazine is accepting nominations for its first Hamptons 40 Under 40 on its nomination page. It is looking for people under 40 with verifiable results, including founders and business owners making real money with AI in New York.

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