Aschenbrenner's Fund Buys AI Options After Near-Collapse — SkimNews
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- Situational Awareness bought options positions in Advanced Micro Devices, Bloom Energy, Coreweave, SK Hynix, SanDisk, and the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) late last week and early this week, according to sources who spoke to CNBC's David Faber.
- The hedge fund's assets plunged from a July peak above $45 billion to roughly $10 billion after a rapid decline in AI-related stocks that Aschenbrenner was buying with leverage.
- The July rout forced Aschenbrenner to unwind his public equity positions to Ken Griffin's Citadel in a fire sale to stave off a full collapse of the fund.
- The fund held onto stakes in private companies, including Anthropic, during the July unwind of public positions.
- It was unclear whether Aschenbrenner was raising new capital to fund the latest activity or deploying assets that remained after the Citadel sale.
Why it matters: Aschenbrenner is redeploying into the same AI and memory-chip names that cratered his fund in July, betting the leveraged trade has room to run again. The source flags ambiguity over whether fresh money or leftover assets are behind the moves, leaving the scale and conviction of his reentry unclear. Counterparties — potentially including Citadel — are likely watching for asymmetric risk on the other side of these trades.
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