Aschenbrenner's $1.1B crypto-miner fund raises after AI sell-off
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- Situational Awareness is approaching investors and lenders for fresh capital after suffering heavy losses in July's AI stock sell-off, per a July 24 investor letter seen by the FT.
- Leopold Aschenbrenner's fund had gained 439% after fees through June but borrowing amplified losses when AI stocks collapsed, and Aschenbrenner wrote in the letter that the sell-off created attractive investment opportunities.
- Situational Awareness held roughly $1.11 billion in positions across seven Bitcoin miner stocks including IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, and CleanSpark, per a March SEC filing, betting on power and data centers pivoting into AI computing.
- The fund, founded in 2024 by the ex-OpenAI researcher, had around $20 billion in assets under management as of June 8 according to the Wall Street Journal.
- Aschenbrenner launched a series of essays on artificial general intelligence in mid-2024 alongside the fund, predicting AGI machines will outpace college graduates by the end of the decade.
Why it matters: The capital raise highlights the double-edged role of leverage at a fund that had compounded 439% gains through June: the same borrowing that supercharged returns magnified losses during July's AI rout, forcing a publicly disclosed fundraising at a $1.1 billion Bitcoin-miner-heavy portfolio that's now exposed to the volatile AI-computing pivot thesis.
