This story is just so so so wild. From who Leopold Aschenbrenner is as a person to his work history to the peak and falloff in days is insane. He was accepted into Columbia at 15 (co-founded the University's effective altruism chapter) and graduated at 19. Went on to be a member of the FTX Future Fund team (he resigned right before they went bankrupt), joined OpenAI as a member of their Superalignment team, but was fired after about a year due to leaking company documents (he claims it was because he went to the board over their security issues), wrote a paper called Situational Awareness also in 2024 and founded a hedge fund that shared its name.
This hedge fund focused on chips, AI infast4ructure and all the physical machinery that would be needed. His returns were just flat out insane. His fund returned 439% through June after fees.... it was just printing money.... but the way he was doing this was risky.... using leverage....
Leverage grants you a much larger purchasing power, and when you use it and are right, the gains are enormous, but when you are wrong, the pain is a heck of a lot deeper. During the July AI selloff, the banks that lent him money told him to put in more money to cover his leverage or face a margin call.... he didn't get the money. Two of his big holdings were South Korean chip maker SK Hynix with short positions in software companies (he took the exact opposite positions for each stake). Since he couldnt raise the money and banks are not going to let you burn billions, the banks sold off the vast majority of the fund. Rival firm, Ken Griffin's Citadel, was able to come in and buy the portfolio in one block.
A portfolio that was worth $45 billion at the beginning of the month ended the month worth about $10 billion and with a new owner. Crazy rise and fall, but at least he was able to keep his $5 billion Anthropic stake. It likely helps that his fiancée, whom he is supposed to marry this weekend, is the Chief of Staff for Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei. What a wild turn of events just days before you were supposed to get married.... once again, leverage claims a new victim.
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