Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund, Situational Awareness, has reentered public financial markets through options trading, sources told CNBC’s David Faber. The activity occurred late last week and early this week, signaling a comeback for the AI researcher after his firm nearly collapsed over the summer.
Situational Awareness purchased options positions in several technology and energy companies, including Advanced Micro Devices, Bloom Energy, and Coreweave. The fund was also active in SK Hynix and SanDisk, while additionally buying options linked to the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM).
This move comes after the fund’s assets plummeted to approximately $10 billion from a peak exceeding $45 billion at the start of July. A sharp decline in AI-related stock prices, which Aschenbrenner had leveraged heavily to buy, forced him to execute a fire sale of his public equity positions to Citadel for Ken Griffin to prevent a total collapse.
Despite the turmoil in public markets, the hedge fund retained its stakes in private companies such as Anthropic. It remains unclear whether Aschenbrenner is injecting new capital into the fund to finance these recent trades or if he is utilizing remaining assets left over after the July liquidation.
Ken Griffin picking up those public positions sounds like a legendary deal. I wonder if he made a killing on that fire sale.
Does anyone else feel a bit nervous seeing someone return to options right after a catastrophic failure? High risk behavior here.
It is fascinating that he kept his private stake in Anthropic while liquidating public equities. That must have been a painful strategic choice.
I am still waiting for the full breakdown of how he lost thirty-five billion in a single month. The details seem to be missing.
Buying energy stocks alongside AI chips? That is a surprisingly diversified hedge after everything that happened this summer.