AI prodigy’s $45B hedge fund collapses after chip bets backfire

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund—once a high-flying AI-focused juggernaut that grew from under $4B to about $45B—lost billions in July as SanDisk, Micron, Bloom Energy and other AI-linked chip bets collapsed, triggering margin calls and a fire sale to Citadel’s Ken Griffin. The blowups wiped roughly 67% off the fund’s value in a single month, shrinking the portfolio to around $10B even as the year-to-date performance remained strong; Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher nicknamed the “Nostradamus of AI,” had pivoted to AGI-focused bets, but the risky chip stock wagers precipitated a dramatic implosion just days before his lavish California wedding.