Gabriel Rauterberg
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Gabriel Rauterberg is a professor of law at Columbia Law School. His work concerns corporate governance, securities regulation, investment funds and contracts, with research connecting artificial intelligence to financial markets and corporate responsibility.[1] He co-authored No Limited Liability for AI with Sarath Sanga, proposing personal exposure for shareholders of frontier AI firms when their companies incur tort judgments.[2]
Roles and affiliations
Rauterberg joined Columbia’s faculty on July 1, 2026, after serving as a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Columbia identifies law and machine learning/AI among his specialties and describes his interest in using AI to study the evolution of securities law and analyze historical legal texts. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from the University of Toronto.[1]
Contributions and positions
Shareholder liability for frontier AI
In No Limited Liability for AI, Rauterberg and Sanga argue that shareholder protection from corporate tort debts shifts losses to people who did not agree to bear those risks. They contend that the effect is particularly severe for frontier AI, where greater model capability can bring both private returns and harms that exceed available compensation.[2]
Their proposal distinguishes investors from controllers. Non-controlling shareholders would face proportional liability upon insolvency, capped by reference to the value of their shares. Controllers would bear more than their proportional share, with uncapped exposure in the detailed proposal. While a firm remains solvent, it would pay a tort judgment and controllers would make an additional personal contribution to its treasury. The authors would prohibit the firm from indemnifying that contribution.[2]
The authors emphasize incentives to reduce risk before insolvency. They discuss insurance for the controller payment, voluntary adoption through corporate charters, collection from dispersed investors and competition with China. The manuscript presents these measures as proposed reforms. Its first-page disclosure states that both authors beneficially hold shares in some AI companies through retirement-account index funds and used Claude and ChatGPT to discuss the essay’s ideas.[2]
Machine learning and financial-market integrity
With Megan Shearer and Michael P. Wellman, Rauterberg co-authored Learning to Manipulate a Financial Benchmark, published at the 2023 ACM International Conference on AI in Finance. The study uses an agent-based simulated market to examine transaction-based benchmark manipulation, including strategies learned through deep reinforcement learning.[3]
The researchers report that agents can sacrifice trading profits to gain more from external contracts tied to a benchmark. Their analysis identifies costs borne by counterparties to those contracts and by users of distorted benchmark information. The results concern the modeled market and inform the paper’s discussion of benchmark design and financial regulation.[3]
Corporate governance scholarship
Rauterberg and Sanga’s Altering Rules: The New Frontier for Corporate Governance examines how corporations change default governance rules. They distinguish the consent needed to make a change from the people bound by it, arguing that the design of those mechanisms affects bargaining and risks for shareholders. The article proposes broader participation by non-signatory shareholders.[4]
Selected works
- No Limited Liability for AI — Undated author manuscript with Sarath Sanga; full PDF and attributed summary.[2]
- Learning to Manipulate a Financial Benchmark (2023) — Co-authored conference paper; accessible full text.[3]
- Altering Rules: The New Frontier for Corporate Governance (2025) — Co-authored journal article; institutional publication record and abstract.[4]
Institutional coverage
- Columbia Law School faculty biography — Current affiliation, research interests and selected publications.[1]
Related articles
- Sarath Sanga
- No Limited Liability for AI
- United States policy on catastrophic AI risk
- People in AI and Law
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Columbia Law School, Gabriel Rauterberg, faculty biography and publications. Accessed October 4, 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Gabriel Rauterberg and Sarath Sanga, No Limited Liability for AI, undated author manuscript, pp. 1, 9–19.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Megan Shearer, Gabriel Rauterberg and Michael P. Wellman, Learning to Manipulate a Financial Benchmark, 4th ACM International Conference on AI in Finance (2023), pp. 592–600, DOI: 10.1145/3604237.3626847.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive, Gabriel Rauterberg and Sarath Sanga, Altering Rules: The New Frontier for Corporate Governance, 42 Yale Journal on Regulation 291 (2025), publication record and abstract.