Karla Barker 
A hedge fund founded by Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher, is now talking to investors and lenders about raising new money after the recent artificial intelligence stock sell-off hit its portfolio hard. The Financial Times reported Thursday that the fund, called Situational Awareness, has also offered some investors the chance to buy portfolio assets directly. The exact size of the losses and the amount of capital sought were not disclosed.
The fund reportedly had around $20 billion in assets under management as of June 8, according to the Wall Street Journal. That number is striking for a fund launched in 2024. Aschenbrenner built a reputation with essays predicting that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, would arrive quickly and outpace college graduates by the end of the decade.
A sharp reversal after big gains
Through June, the fund had gained 439% after fees, according to a July 24 investor letter seen by the FT. The problem, the FT says, is that borrowing increased the size of its bets. When AI stocks collapsed in July, those bets went south quickly. The losses were heavy enough to push the fund into talks with outside capital providers. Aschenbrenner reportedly argued in the letter that the sell-off has created attractive opportunities, which may be part of the pitch to new backers.
It is not unusual for funds to seek capital after a drawdown, but the scale here is notable. Situational Awareness had become a big name in AI-adjacent investing in a short time. Now it is trying to steady itself while keeping its core thesis intact.
Bitcoin miners in the portfolio
One of the fund’s bigger public positions involves Bitcoin miners. A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission from March showed about $1.11 billion spread across seven Bitcoin miner stocks. Those included IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms and CleanSpark. This wasn’t a simple bet on crypto mining profits. Aschenbrenner’s larger idea was that the power and data centers supporting AI would become a bottleneck, and miners were well positioned to pivot into AI computing.
That thesis made sense during the AI boom. Some miners did strike deals to host AI workloads or sell access to their power capacity. But the sell-off in July hit the whole trade. The fund’s borrowing likely made the pain worse.
Cointelegraph reached out to Situational Awareness for comment but did not receive a response by publication time. It remains unclear how the capital talks will end, or whether the offer to sell portfolio assets will attract interest. For now, the fund is in a wait-and-see position, and Aschenbrenner’s conviction appears unchanged.