# Leopold Aschenbrenner, media’s AI golden boy investor, unloads all public stock to Citadel after facing margin calls > Source: > Published: 2026-07-31 12:33:40+00:00 There’s no bigger hype machine that the business media, who are wont to anoint twenty year olds as the “[next Steve Jobs](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/04/elizabeth-holmes-from-next-steve-jobs-to-convicted-fraudster)” (Elizabeth Holmes) or the “[next Warren Buffett](https://www.wsj.com/finance/being-the-next-warren-buffett-sounds-like-an-honor-it-is-more-of-a-curse-b071c4bb?st=UVEnv2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink)” (Sam Bankman Fried). Next up is Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI employee turned hedge fund founder of Situational Awareness, who just last week was featured in the Wall Street Journal: In June, the Wall Street Journal called him the “** 24-year-old AI Wiz**.” The hedge fund was reportedly on a tear on AI-related investments, expanding in value to [$45 billion as reported by CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/30/leopold-aschenbrenners-hedge-fund-is-facing-steep-ai-losses.html). But Situational Awareness reportedly faced margin calls from its brokers due to the recent market correction for AI-related companies. That forced Aschenbrenner to sell off all the fund’s stocks in publicly traded companies to Ken Griffin’s Citadel. Situational Awareness [still has a stake in Anthropic](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/30/leopold-aschenbrenners-hedge-fund-is-facing-steep-ai-losses.html), however. CNBC reports that Aschenbrenner is married to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s chief of staff, Avital Balwit.