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AI hedge fund Situational Awareness may have sold its public portfolio, but it still has its Anthropic shares
Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund Situational Awareness has sold the majority of its public stock portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel following steep losses over the past month, marking a dramatic reversal for the former OpenAI researcher whose AI infrastructure investment thesis had driven a 439% return through June. The fund, launched in 2024 by the 25-year-old German-born prodigy with no prior trading experience, had grown assets under management to as much as $45 billion before positions in memory chip producers SK Hynix and Sandisk, clean energy developer Bloom Energy, and neocloud provider Nebius Group plummeted by over 30%. Losses were amplified by leverage, and after Citadel acquired the bulk of those holdings, Situational Awareness's overall assets fell to roughly $10 billion, down from around $20 billion. Aschenbrenner, who gained prominence for arguing that scaling AI would require massive build-ups in semiconductors, compute, memory, and energy infrastructure, had called the selloff a buying opportunity in a July 24 investor letter, but failed to secure hoped-for fresh commitments. Citadel's purchase fits its pattern of acquiring attractive assets from leveraged players forced to unwind. Notably, Situational Awareness retained its private investments, including a stake in Anthropic valued at $5 billion, which could offset public-market losses if the AI company goes public as soon as October. Other private holdings include chipmaker MatX and AI data center startup Fluidstack. Early backers of the fund included Jane Street, Stripe co-founders, and Meta executives.