A 24-year-old's AI fund fell from $45 billion to $10 billion in days. Now the SEC is subpoenaing his banks.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent subpoenas to Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase — the banks that lent to Situational Awareness and cleared its trades — and told them to preserve everything related to the fund. Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher, started it in July 2024 at the age of 22 and had never run money before. The book was concentrated in the suppliers of the AI build-out — Nebius, SanDisk, Micron, CoreWeave — with reported leverage as high as 400 percent; when those names fell more than 35 percent in a month, margin calls forced him to sell the public portfolio to Citadel at a discount, and roughly $45 billion in positions became about $10 billion. Regulators want the timing of the trades, the leverage, and the conversations with lenders. No one has been accused of wrongdoing, and the fund says it will cooperate fully.
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