Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI hedge fund Situational Awareness sells its public stock book to Citadel after July AI-stock rout
Around 2026-07-30 Situational Awareness LP, the fund launched by ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, author of the 2024 "Situational Awareness" essay, had to sell nearly all its leveraged public stock positions to Ken Griffin's Citadel at a discount, after AI-infrastructure stocks such as SK Hynix, CoreWeave and Micron fell more than 35% in July. CNBC reported assets falling from as much as $45B to about $10B. It kept private holdings, including Anthropic.
Key facts
- CNBC (2026-07-30): fund forced to unwind all public stock positions after steep AI losses; CNBC (2026-07-31): '$45B to fire sale'
- WSJ via Yahoo Finance (2026-07-30): Citadel bought the bulk of the listed holdings; Millennium also bid; price not disclosed
- Reported leverage of up to ~4x (400%); the public book sold was estimated at roughly $16B; assets after the sale about $10B (reports differ: WSJ put peak AUM at 'more than $20 billion', CNBC at $45B)
- Strategy: long memory chips, data centers and power (SK Hynix, Sandisk, Micron, CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN, Core Scientific, Bloom Energy), short software exposed to AI disruption
- Before July: >1,000% since inception (WSJ, June) and a reported 439% net in H1 2026
- Private positions such as Anthropic were not part of the sale
- Later reports (low-tier outlets, unverified) say the SEC subpoenaed banks over the sale
What happened
A fund built directly on the "AGI is coming, buy the compute supply chain" thesis grew very fast on leverage. It unwound in one block trade when AI-infrastructure stocks fell sharply in July 2026, the same month as the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident.
Why it matters
It was the biggest market casualty of the AI-infrastructure trade so far, and a sign of how much capital was riding on short AGI timelines. Reports say AI stocks rose once the forced seller was gone, so it was a leverage event more than a verdict on AI. AUM figures differ between outlets (gross exposure vs net assets); treat all headline numbers as approximate.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created
Related events
Sources (6)
- pressCNBC - Aschenbrenner forced to unwind all public stock positions after steep losses (2026-07-30)
- pressCNBC - Situational Awareness fund: $45B to fire sale (2026-07-31)
- pressYahoo Finance / WSJ - Citadel buys bulk of Situational Awareness portfolio
- pressCNBC - Filing shows AI bets before forced sale to Citadel (2026-08-14)
- pressQuartz - AI hedge fund collapses after margin calls
- discussionWikipedia - Leopold Aschenbrenner
id: 2026-07-30-situational-awareness-fund-fire-sale · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline