Two years ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner left OpenAI and published a 165-page essay about the future of artificial intelligence. Then he started a hedge fund.
Situational Awareness LP, the AI-focused hedge fund Aschenbrenner launched in July 2024, peaked at roughly $45 billion in assets under management by early July 2026. Weeks later, a vicious correction in semiconductor stocks wiped out an estimated $35 billion, cratering the fund’s AUM to approximately $10 billion. That’s a drawdown of about 67%.
The unraveling
The fund had built its fortune on aggressive, concentrated bets in AI infrastructure equities. For months, those positions generated multi-hundred percent returns.
When semiconductor stocks turned south, the losses triggered margin calls from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citibank. Meeting those calls required the fund to liquidate most of its public equity portfolio.
