Zach Frankel, the secretive angel behind the first cheques into Ramp and Cognition

The Information has profiled Zach Frankel, a 37-year-old Miami-based angel who invests only his own money and has kept an almost invisible public profile outside Silicon Valley's inner circle, where founders simply call him "ZF".

What's reported

Frankel wrote the first cheques into Ramp (recently valued at $44B) and Cognition ($48B), and also backed Applied Compute, Together AI and Modal. He sits on Cognition's board, where CEO Scott Wu leans on him for strategy, and he co-started Long Lake Management with CEO Alex Taubman in 2023 after years of brainstorming together. With Harvard friends Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh he was the first investor and a board member at Paribus (later sold to Capital One) before doing the same at Ramp. Earlier he interned at Founders Fund, sat on Juul's board and co-founded Better.com with Vishal Garg.

Investors including Elad Gil, Peter Thiel and D1 Capital's Dan Sundheim often follow him into deals, an approach he has called "capitalism with friends". He recruits heavily from maths and informatics olympiad circles: according to the article, more than a quarter of Team USA's International Olympiad in Informatics contestants from 2010 to 2025 have founded, work at or advise companies he backs.

Caveats

Frankel declined to comment, and much of the network detail rests on unnamed sources. The article does not size his personal capital or his stakes. It also notes that he is invested in both Cognition and its rival Factory, which clashed publicly over Cognition hiring Factory adviser Chris Degnan.

Why it matters

Several of this cycle's most valuable AI and fintech companies trace back to one person who runs no fund and has no LPs, a reminder that early-stage influence often sits outside the cap tables and fund filings most people can see.

Source: The Information, "Shroud of Secrecy Cloaks Star Investor Behind Cognition, Ramp" (8 October 2026)