One of Wall Street’s most-watched AI investors just sold off all his stocks. Here’s why

Leopold Aschenbrenner's $24 billion AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness sold off the bulk of its public equities to Ken Griffin's $71 billion Citadel fund after suffering massive losses on AI and software stocks, according to CNBC and the Wall Street Journal. The fund, which holds a $5 billion private stake in Anthropic, will continue as a private investment firm, and its prime brokers including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase were working to meet margin requirements.

Situational Awareness—an AI https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence -focused hedge fund run by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner—made headlines on Thursday when it sold off investments and was unwinding trades after suffering massive losses on AI https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence and software stocks, according to CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/30/leopold-aschenbrenners-hedge-fund-is-facing-steep-ai-losses.html , who spoke with people familiar with the situation. Fast Company has reached out to Situational Awareness for comment. The $24 billion hedge fund has sold the bulk of its public equities to Ken Griffin’s $71 billion Citadel fund, the Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/finance/citadel-buys-situational-awarenesss-stock-portfolio-after-big-losses-in-ai-5117159b reported. The massive deal was reportedly forged over the last 24 hours. Situational Awareness, which has $5 billion private stake in AI giant Anthropic, will continue to run as a private investment firm, according to the Financial Times . Aschenbrenner, a 25-year-old from Germany, launched his San Francisco-based fund in September 2024, after working on the Superalignment team https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment?ref=forourposterity.com at OpenAI— from which he was reportedly fired, according to Fortune https://finance.yahoo.com/news/23-old-former-openai-researcher-170509906.html . The news comes after Situational Awareness reportedly suffered heavy losses in the last few weeks, as AI and semiconductor stocks https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/semiconductor-crash-3-stocks-buy-182000427.html took a battering. Those familiar with the situation told CNBC some of those positions were in South Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix Nasdaq: SKHY https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SKHY/ —whose stock was up 16% midday Thursday ; and short positions in software companies such as Adobe Inc. Nasdaq: ADBE https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ADBE/ —which was down over 6% at the time of this writing. As a result, the fund was trying to raise cash to meet margin requirements, which the firm’s prime brokers—including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase—were working on, according to CNBC’s sources.