Business Insider's 2026 Rising Stars of Wall Street

Ray Dak Lam for BI A lot of what's happening on Wall Street right now is unprecedented. Record-breaking sums are being raised to fuel the artificial intelligence boom, geopolitical uncertainty and technological disruption are shaking up markets, and more blockbuster IPOs that could shatter records are on the horizon. For the industry's up-and-coming talent, it's been a moment of enormous opportunity. As one of this year's rising stars, Morgan Stanley managing director Maya Venkatraman, put it: "The most interesting work happens when there isn't a ready-made template." Business Insider's Rising Stars of Wall Street is celebrating its 10th class of young professionals making a substantial impact in investing, trading, and dealmaking. The process begins with nominations from bosses, colleagues, recruiters, and other industry insiders. To be considered, nominees must be US-based, 35 or younger, and stand out among their peers. Business Insider's editors make the final selections. Several of our stars are investing billions in the companies building AI and inventing new ways to finance the infrastructure that will support it. Others are pioneering new trading strategies, building businesses from the ground up, and advising on consequential deals. Maya Venkatraman Courtesy of Maya Venkatraman; Ray Dak Lam for BI Maya Venkatraman is helping create the blueprint for Wall Street's data-center debt boom. Venkatraman, a managing director, played a leading role in structuring a novel $3.2 billion bond for data center developer TeraWulf, with credit support from Google. "There wasn't really a playbook that existed," said Venkatraman, Morgan Stanley's US head of transportation and infrastructure leveraged finance. Traditional project financing couldn't meet the industry's enormous capital needs alone, so her team developed the structure last fall, which has since served as a template for a market she said has generated roughly $45 billion in high-yield bond issuance over the past year. Venkatraman also had to educate investors and ratings agencies about the emerging asset class, swapping traditional roadshows for visits to data-center project sites, steel-toed boots and all. The deal was "really defining" for Mumbai-born Venkatraman, who joined Morgan Stanley in 2013 and was promoted to MD in January 2026. She's led the structuring and execution of more than 110 transactions throughout her career. It also wasn't the first time dealing with unconventional financing solutions. Newly promoted to vice president when COVID-19 brought travel to a halt, she worked with her team around the clock to help airlines and cruise operators secure liquidity, including raising billions for Royal Caribbean. "People were asking, are we ever gonna get on an airplane again? Are we ever gonna take a cruise again?" she recalled. The crisis accelerated her career, giving her "multiple times the reps" of others at her level. Venkatraman discovered finance and her analytical side at the University of Virginia. She credits her love of literature and history with helping her translate complex financial concepts into compelling stories for investors. Outside work, the longtime distance runner finds that her best problem-solving happens on runs, sometimes accompanied by her 4-year-old daughter in a stroller. She's expecting her second child in the coming weeks. Theo Saarinen Courtesy of Theo Saarinen; Ray Dak Lam for BI Theo Saarinen's career path is more akin to that of a high-flying tech founder than a hedge fund researcher. The 27-year-old is the chief research officer for Bridgewater's AIA Labs, the internal AI research unit run by the $102 billion Connecticut-based hedge fund giant. The unit's AI-powered fund is up nearly 16% through September this year, outpacing the S&P 500 and the average hedge fund over the same period. While Saarinen is checking his fund's performance "returns all the time — it's a very important piece of feedback," he approaches his role with an almost academic mindset, befitting his background. He joined the AIA group in 2023 while pursuing a doctorate in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley. He became one of the group's first hires, thanks in part to a relationship with his academic mentors Bin Yu and Jasjeet Sekhon, the latter of whom co-founded AIA Labs at Bridgewater with the firm's co-CIO Greg Jensen. Now, Saarinen is focused on connecting "the frontier of AI" with markets. He spends a lot of his time deconstructing the decision-making of the strategy — "peeling back the machines' thoughts to understand why they're doing what they're doing," he said. And, on top of his role, he's kept a foot in academia — he's writing his dissertation and plans to complete his doctorate soon, while keeping tabs on new developments across the AI space. He's also a player in the hedge-fund talent war, saying they're always looking for talented people at rivals, but also at Big Tech companies and high-flying