How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days
Two years ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner argued he was one of few people in the world who saw the future clearly. In a sprawling, 165-page essay that became required reading in Silicon Valley, the former OpenAI researcher positioned himself as a kind of prophet for the coming age of artificial super intelligence. But this week, the limits of Aschenbrenner's vision were on display when the AI-themed hedge fund he runs — named Situational Awareness, also the title of his viral June 2024 manifesto — ran into the harsh reality of tumbling semiconductor stocks and Wall Street margin calls. At its peak earlier this month, his fund sat atop $45 billion in assets. By Thursday, however, after being forced to offload all of his leveraged stock bets — including hard-hit names like SK Hynix and CoreWeave — to Ken Griffin's Citadel at a discount, the fund's holdings plunged to around $10 billion, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The story of Aschenbrenner's meteoric rise and sudden fall has captivated both Wall Street and tech circles, making him the most high-profile casualty yet of the volatility accompanying the AI boom. A polarizing figure, his online followers saw Aschenbrenner — a Columbia University valedictorian at age 19 — as a genius of the next big thing and followed his fund's quarterly filings for clues on hot AI stocks. Before this month's decline, Situational Awareness racked up gains of more than 1,000% since inception, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. The Journal noted Aschenbrenner was just 24 years old. Meanwhile, critics pointed out that Aschenbrenner had no experience running money prior to launching his fund in July 2024, calling him more lucky than smart. Some noted that his early work experience was at the doomed crypto firm FTX, where he helped now-disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried run a charity out of a Bahamas penthouse. Others on Wall Street, including former traders at global investment banks, noted that in light of reports Situational Awareness used as much as 400% leverage, the collapse wasn't shocking. "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." Earlier this week, before the sale to Citadel, about two-thirds of Situational Awareness holdings were in long and short positions in public equities, according to one source. The rest were stakes in private companies, dominated by a multibillion-dollar Anthropic investment, the person said. CNBC's sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic details.
