Margin Mayhem to Capital Comeback: Silicon Valley Bets on a 25-Year-Old AI Hedge Fund Prodigy
Leopold Aschenbrenner, 25, ran the AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness with up to 400% leverage on bets in Nebius, SanDisk, CoreWeave and SK Hynix, triggering margin calls that wiped out about $35 billion of investors’ money in days. Remarkably, within two weeks Silicon Valley insiders moved to back him again, though the fund is not taking new money for now. He redeployed roughly $500 million into private AI ventures and still holds private stakes like Anthropic, reinforcing a conviction-based comeback story and reigniting debate over mixing venture-style bets with margin.