The $45 billion AI hedge fund Situational Awareness has imploded
Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI-focused hedge fund, which grew to roughly $45 billion at its peak, was forced to sell most of its public stock portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel after steep losses on AI infrastructure bets like SK Hynix and shorts that moved against it. Assets have fallen to about $10 billion. The former OpenAI researcher's firm will continue as a private investment vehicle, keeping a roughly $5 billion stake in Anthropic.
Why it mattersIt is the first major blowup of the AI investment boom. Markets are repricing how fast AI infrastructure spending pays off — and with leverage, even true believers can get carried out.
Read in the app — free, in 9 languages
Related stories
Anthropic expects to raise as much as SpaceX did — the largest listing in history — and could file publicly this month2026-08-21Nvidia is paying $6 billion for the machine that builds a rival's models — and hiring 109 of the people who ran it
2026-08-21The doctors and lawyers who grade AI answers are now a half-billion-dollar business — and this one grew fivefold in eight months
2026-08-21Anthropic still leads on business AI spending. For the first time since May, the gap is closing rather than widening.
2026-08-21Alibaba's AI business grew at its fastest pace in five and a half years. Its profit fell about 75 percent.
2026-08-20