Aschenbrenner Reinvests $400 Million After Situational Awareness Lost $35 Billion
Updated
Updated · Yahoo Finance · Aug 17
Aschenbrenner Reinvests $400 Million After Situational Awareness Lost $35 Billion
3 articles · Updated · Yahoo Finance · Aug 17
Summary
$400 million went into an undisclosed private company, marking Leopold Aschenbrenner's first public move to rebuild Situational Awareness after its near-collapse.
Margin calls forced the AI-focused hedge fund to dump leveraged public holdings to Citadel, slashing assets to about $10 billion from a $45 billion peak at the start of July.
Situational Awareness had used as much as 400% leverage and concentrated on AI infrastructure names including SK Hynix and CoreWeave, leaving it exposed when tech stocks sold off.
Jane Street, a backer of the fund, said the drawdown helped drive a $15 billion July hit and pushed its monthly trading revenue negative for the first time since 2016.
Aschenbrenner told investors he would draw lessons from the episode, while Jane Street said it has cut much of the exposure behind the losses and turned more cautious.