AI wizkid Leopold Aschenbrenner forced to sell entire portfolio after rout

Investing.com - Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness LP hedge fund has sold its entire stock portfolio in one block trade after steep losses in the AI-focused portfolio, CNBC reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Several of the fund’s prime brokers, including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, have been working with it to meet margin requirements and unwind positions in an orderly manner, people familiar with the matter said.

The report follows news overnight from the Financial Times that Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher, approached existing investors and lenders for new money, and some investors were offered a chance to buy portfolio assets directly.

The capital crunch underscores how quickly a historically strong run can reverse in concentrated AI plays. Situational Awareness was up approximately 439% after fees in 2026 through the end of June and grew as large as $45 billion before the AI sell-off, led by a collapse in South Korea, CNBC said.

Publicly traded AI infrastructure names in Situational Awareness’s known long book — including Bloom Energy, CoreWeave and Nebius — were hit hard in the current rout. Many of the stocks in his portfolio are rebounding sharply today amid the news. Some of the fund’s other large holdings included Sandisk and Micron.

The fund’s Q1 filings also showed Situational Awareness took a new $43.9 million position in T1 Energy, grew its Bitdeer Technologies stake by 92.4%, acquired 3.39 million shares of HIVE Digital Technologies, and trimmed its Solaris Energy Infrastructure position by 40.8%. Those moves illustrate the breadth of AI-adjacent infrastructure bets that have now come under pressure.

In a July 24 letter to investors, the fund described the tech rout as a buying opportunity and pointed to a potential Anthropic IPO as a forward catalyst for the sector, the FT reported. The letter signals that Aschenbrenner remains constructive on AI infrastructure even as the drawdown forces a capital raise.

“PS. At times we call out opportunities that seem like a particularly good time to add funds, if you have been waiting for one,” the letter closed, according to the FT.

Aschenbrenner graduated as Columbia University’s valedictorian at 19 before joining OpenAI’s Superalignment team. He was fired in 2024 after OpenAI said he improperly disclosed internal information, a characterization he disputes, saying he shared a largely nonconfidential document and that his dismissal followed disagreements over security concerns. OpenAI denies any connection. He is married to Avital Balwit, the chief of staff for Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

The fund isn’t navigating the storm alone. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have issued margin calls to hedge funds holding highly concentrated AI positions, demanding additional collateral to maintain existing leverage.

Venu Krishna, head of U.S. equity strategy at Barclays, framed the broader backdrop: "The market is currently most focused on three issues: financing uncertainty, corporate capital expenditure expansion, and pressure on big tech free cash flow." Those three factors map almost directly onto the thesis Situational Awareness was built around, and explain why a fund with such concentrated exposure faced outsized pain when sentiment shifted.

The exact size of the fund’s drawdown has not been publicly disclosed, and it is unclear whether any lenders or investors have agreed to provide fresh capital since the approaches were made. The $45 billion AUM figure predates the July selloff, and the current net asset value is unconfirmed. Whether any portfolio-asset sales to investors have been executed, and at what prices relative to NAV, also remains unconfirmed.

The timing of a potential Anthropic IPO, cited by Situational Awareness as a key catalyst, also remains unspecified. How quickly that listing materializes, and whether it can serve as a sentiment anchor for AI infrastructure stocks more broadly, will be closely watched by investors weighing whether to participate in the fund’s capital raise.

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