Two weeks ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner watched roughly $35 billion of investors' money disappear within days.
His AI hedge fund, Situational Awareness, fell from a peak of $45 billion in early July to around $10 billion by late July after a massive crash in AI-focused stocks driven by leveraged bets through margin calls.Despite the sharp decline, unnerved Aschenbrenner approached existing investors and lenders to raise fresh capital.
The report said some investors have also been offered the opportunity to purchase assets directly from the fund's portfolio, though one person familiar with the discussions described the process as ad-hoc rather than a formal fundraising effort, the Financial Times reported.Who is Leopold Aschenbrenner?Born in Germany, Aschenbrenner graduated as Columbia's valedictorian in 2021 at the age of 19 and later joined OpenAI's Superalignment team.
He was fired in April 2024 over an alleged information leak, which he disputes.The minimum reported investment in his fund was $25 million.
Its backers included Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, investor Daniel Gross, as well as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.How did the $35 billion wipeout unravel?The fund's problems emerged in late July as AI-linked stocks suffered a sharp selloff.
