The Situational Awareness fund led by Leopold Aschenbrenner has fallen sharply, sliding from a peak of about $45 billion in assets earlier this month to roughly $10 billion by Thursday, after selling its leveraged stock positions into a declining semiconductor market and amid margin calls, according to people familiar with the matter.
Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher who gained attention for a 165-page essay forecasting rapid advances in artificial intelligence, has been a polarizing figure in both finance and technology. The AI-themed hedge fund, named after his June 2024 manifesto Situational Awareness, reportedly built large, leveraged bets in chip and AI infrastructure names before being forced to unwind positions at a discount to Ken Griffin’s Citadel, the people said.
Sources said the fund exited holdings that included SK Hynix and CoreWeave. The swift reversal has turned Aschenbrenner into one of the most prominent faces of the volatility surrounding the AI investment boom. Before this month’s downturn, the fund had amassed gains exceeding 1,000 percent since inception, according to a report last month. The report put Aschenbrenner’s age at 24.
Followers on social media viewed the Columbia University valedictorian as an early seer of the next wave in AI, combing the firm’s quarterly disclosures for signals on hot trades. Detractors countered that he launched in July 2024 with no prior money-management track record and benefited from fortunate timing. Some critics also noted his brief stint at FTX’s philanthropic arm, led by Sam Bankman-Fried.
Market professionals said the fund’s reported use of leverage as high as 400 percent made a drawdown likely once chip stocks stumbled. “A lot of people saw this blow-up as a matter of not if, but when,” said Jerry Diao, who runs a Wall Street coaching firm. “Maybe his views on AI are correct in the long run, but in the public markets, you have to be prepared for the short-term.” The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this week, prior to the sale to Citadel, about two-thirds of the Situational Awareness fund was in long and short public equity positions, one person said. The remainder was in private stakes, dominated by a multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, according to the person. The sources requested anonymity to discuss nonpublic details.
The near-collapse of the fund coincides with Aschenbrenner’s wedding scheduled for this weekend, sources said. He is engaged to Avital Balwit, chief of staff to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, according to a published profile.
‘Weirdness’ and ‘disagreeableness’
Aschenbrenner was born in Germany to physician parents and later moved to the United States. Profiles and interviews describe early aptitude in math and computer science. He skipped several grades in Germany, finished high school at 15, and at Columbia University drew notice for a paper titled “Existential Risk and Growth.”
Classmate Sofia Montrone said she first met him over Zoom shortly before their 2021 graduation and recalled he was not widely known on campus. She described him as “child-like” and socially awkward. Aschenbrenner has said his intellectual “weirdness” and “disagreeableness” felt discouraged in Germany, but he came to view them as an advantage.
While at Columbia, he co-founded the university’s chapter of Effective Altruism, a philosophy influential in parts of the tech world that encourages earning to give. That network helped steer his early career, including a role at the FTX-affiliated Future Fund after his 2021 graduation.
In 2023, he joined OpenAI’s Superalignment team under Ilya Sutskever to work on ensuring AI systems remain aligned with human interests. After a hacker breached OpenAI’s internal systems, he warned the board in a memo that security was inadequate to counter foreign espionage, naming China. In 2024, OpenAI terminated his employment, alleging he improperly shared confidential information. He has disputed that characterization, saying he raised concerns about security. Computer scientist Scott Aaronson said this week he was sorry to see Aschenbrenner pushed out and that it sounded like leadership overreacted. OpenAI declined to comment beyond earlier statements that the firm disagreed with many of his claims.
Situational Awareness fund backers
Weeks after leaving OpenAI, Aschenbrenner expanded his brief experience at the AI company into a sweeping view of the technology’s trajectory. His June 2024 essay argued that artificial general intelligence could arrive within years and that policymakers were misjudging the pace. Admirers cited his insight, while critics said he overstated both near-term capabilities and his own certainty.
By July 2024, he had converted that momentum into seed capital for the Situational Awareness fund, launching a two-year run that was extraordinary by Wall Street standards. He raised about $225 million from backers including Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and investor Daniel Gross. At the time, he wrote that the world would soon wake up to what a few hundred people in the AI community already saw, adding that if they were even close to right, markets were in for a wild ride.
The AI-themed hedge fund, named after his June 2024 manifesto Situational Awareness, reportedly built large, leveraged bets in chip and AI infrastructure names before being forced to unwind positions at a discount to Ken Griffin’s Citadel, the people said. The swift reversal has turned Aschenbrenner into one of the most prominent faces of the volatility surrounding the AI investment boom, amid a broader pullback in chip stocks such as Micron.