HOW TO TURN +439% INTO A MARGIN CALL Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI hedge fund Situational Awareness returned +439% in the first half of 2026. Assets under management grew from $225M to over $20B. On paper, it looked like one of the greatest hedge fund launches ever. Then AI stocks corrected. The problem wasn't that the fund was wrong. The problem was leverage. Fund reportedly ran around 4X leverage with concentrated bets on: - AI infrastructure - Semiconductors - Data centers - GPU companies - $BTC miners pivoting to AI As those positions fell, brokers issued margin calls. The fund was forced to liquidate billions of dollars worth of positions. Citadel stepped in and acquired most of the public portfolio. Then something interesting happened, as soon as the forced selling stopped, AI and semiconductor stocks staged a powerful rebound. The lesson? The market doesn't care how smart you are. If you're overleveraged, you're just another forced seller.