Did leverage abuse bury a true god? Leopold forced to exit AI positions. Former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner @leopoldasch founded the fund "Situational Awareness" in 2024 after publishing his paper of the same name, based on the core thesis that the AI race would channel massive capital into chips, data centers, power, and computing infrastructure. The fund subsequently concentrated its investments in AI supply chain companies such as Broadcom, CoreWeave, and Intel, while shorting traditional software stocks likely to be displaced by AI. The bet initially succeeded spectacularly: by the end of June 2026, Situational Awareness had achieved a 439% return for the year, with assets under management exceeding $20 billion. The turning point came in July. AI infrastructure stocks collectively corrected, causing the fund’s long positions to decline while some short positions rose against it—resulting in losses on both sides. The fund’s total exposure approached four times its net asset value. In July, it suffered a peak loss of approximately 67%, after which it liquidated all leverage and was forced to sell assets under pressure from its prime broker. Ultimately, Wall Street veteran Citadel acquired the majority of the fund’s public equity portfolio. Axios reported that all public equities have been sold; Reuters stated that primarily leveraged positions held through brokers were liquidated, leaving the fund with around $10 billion in remaining assets—including private investments such as Anthropic. Leopold, however, has lost the right to maintain public positions.