Citrini Comments on AI-Focused Fund’s Situational Awareness and Search for New Capital

ME News reports that on July 30 (UTC+8), in response to recent claims that “Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund is seeking new capital,” the well-known investment research firm Citrini posted an evaluation on X: “If you were a limited partner in Situational Awareness and invested based on the fund’s offering materials stating, ‘Artificial intelligence is the only thing that matters; if you recognize this and want to express that view by investing in a vehicle that fully leverages our most bullish stance on AI through aggressive long positions in the market,’ then you didn’t invest merely because you believe in AI—you believed Leopold is one of the few ‘hundreds’—or knows the few ‘hundreds’—who will bring about the Machine God before 2030. And over the next two years, the fund delivered exactly as promised. And it rose—roughly twentyfold, if I recall correctly. Again, in this scenario, you’re the person who read the ‘Situational Awareness’ paper and said, ‘Yes, I agree AI is more powerful than nuclear weapons and will upend the world before this decade ends. I want to put my capital into a hedge fund version of that thesis.’ Now those stocks have declined, so the fund’s assets have fallen. Let me ask you—do these LPs look like people who turned bearish on AI because SK Hynix dropped by half in six weeks? People who regard tech optimism on the level of ‘I’m going long TQQQ’ as equivalent to investing in municipal bond funds? Yeah… I wouldn’t expect many of them to call Mr. Ash Burner right now to complain. Some haven’t realized how insane a 2,200% gain since inception (2024) really is. For perspective: if you’d invested $100 million in SALP at its launch and lost 90% of that gain by July, your investment would still be worth $230 million today. I believe the LPs will likely buy the dip. Situational Awareness will get the capital it needs. And once funds are secured, they’ll unwind their (likely short-term) hedges—since they no longer face the risk of being liquidated by prime brokers—meaning market makers who sold them those hedges will now cover their delta hedges on what may be substantial notional exposures. Meanwhile, they’ll deploy that capital into what they see as ‘the best buying opportunity since April 2025.’ I don’t think Leopold is in trouble; rather, he’s likely to raise the capital he needs—which means Leopold is now more likely to trigger a market bottom than to cause a collapse in AI (Source: ODAILY)