Situational Awareness, a hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has sold the majority of its public stock portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel at a discount exceeding 10 percent, following severe losses in July that forced the liquidation.
The fund, which had grown to as much as $45 billion in assets by early July, employed leverage roughly four times its capital and suffered when semiconductor holdings including SK Hynix, Sandisk, and Nebius plummeted more than 30 percent, while simultaneous short bets on software stocks such as Adobe backfired as those shares rallied. Aschenbrenner confirmed in a letter to investors that the portfolio was sold as a block but stressed the fund has not been closed, noting it remains up 80 percent for the year and retains over $10 billion in assets, including a stake in Anthropic valued between $3.5 billion and $5 billion.
Aschenbrenner, who graduated from Columbia University at 19 and was later dismissed from OpenAI's Superalignment team in 2024, said he takes full responsibility for the outcome.