How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days
📰 source: cnbc_topnews · 💼 business
leopold aschenbrenner's hedge fund, situational awareness, peaked at $45 billion in assets earlier this month. by thursday, after margin calls and forced selling of leveraged stock bets — including sk hynix and coreweave — to citadel at a discount, the fund's holdings plunged to around $10 billion. the former openai researcher launched the fund in july 2024 with no prior money-management experience, and reports say it used as much as 400% leverage.
aschenbrenner, 24, gained fame for a 165-page essay predicting artificial super intelligence. his fund racked up gains of over 1,000% since inception, per the wall street journal. about two-thirds of holdings were public equities, with the rest private — including a multibillion-dollar anthropic stake. critics say the collapse was inevitable, given the leverage and his background at ftx.
the near-collapse coincides with his wedding this weekend. cnbc's sources spoke anonymously to discuss nonpublic details.
why it matters: leveraged ai hedge fund's collapse shows how fast margin calls can erase gains, even for a celebrated tech prodigy.
source: cnbc_topnews
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