Situational Awareness sells portfolio to Citadel
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- Situational Awareness, founded in 2024 by 25-year-old former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, sold the bulk of its public stock portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel after steep losses; the fund had returned 439% through June and peaked at roughly $45 billion in AUM (WSJ, FT).
- In a July 24 investor letter, Aschenbrenner called the selloff one of the best buying opportunities since early last year and invited fresh capital starting August 1 — an appeal Bloomberg reports fell short of hoped-for commitments.
- Citadel snapped up hard-hit positions including SK Hynix, Sandisk, Bloom Energy, and Nebius Group — all down more than 30% in the past month — reducing the fund's assets from roughly $20 billion to about $10 billion.
- Situational Awareness retained its private investments, including a $5 billion Anthropic stake — Anthropic was last valued at $965 billion in a May Series H and could go public as soon as October.
- Other retained private bets include chipmaker MatX and AI data center startup Fluidstack, reportedly in talks in April to raise at an $18 billion valuation.
- Early backers of Situational Awareness include Jane Street, Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, and Meta executives Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman.
Why it matters: The fund lost roughly half its assets (~$20B to ~$10B) as leveraged AI infrastructure bets on names like SK Hynix and Nebius reversed over the past month. Its retained $5 billion Anthropic stake — which could multiply through an October IPO at a $965 billion-plus valuation — gives Aschenbrenner a private windfall that may offset his public-market pain.
