25-Year-Old Lost $35 Billion of His Investors’ Money. 2 Weeks Later, Silicon Valley Insiders Are Lining Up to Give Him More Cash.

2 weeks ago 11

AJ Tiarsmith

Mon, August 10, 2026 astatine 5:50 AM CDT 4 min read

Quick Read

Aschenbrenner ran 400% leverage connected concentrated AI bets including $NBIS and $CRWV, triggering borderline calls that vaporized $35 cardinal successful days.
Shorts successful $ADBE moved against the fund, yet wrong 2 weeks Silicon Valley insiders rallied to connection Aschenbrenner caller capital.
Aschenbrenner deployed $500 cardinal into backstage companies post-collapse and retains Anthropic stakes, signaling condemnation from a $10 cardinal remaining base.
Act now: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable named his apical 10 AI stocks — and Nebius Group didn't marque the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Two weeks ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner watched astir $35 cardinal of investors' wealth evaporate successful days. His AI hedge fund, Situational Awareness, went from a $45 cardinal highest successful aboriginal July to astir $10 cardinal by precocious July aft leveraged bets connected AI infrastructure stocks unwound successful borderline calls. Wall Street and Silicon Valley insiders are present asking to manus him much money. The money is telling them no, for now.

A young antheral with curly brownish hair, wearing a acheronian bluish ribbed sweater, sits astatine a airy brownish woody table with his close manus resting connected his chin, looking contemplatively astatine 3 machine monitors. The monitors show analyzable fiscal charts, banal tickers, and quality feeds. On the table are a achromatic keyboard, a achromatic mouse, a speckled achromatic and brownish java mug, an unfastened notebook with a achromatic pen, and a closed acheronian book. A modern bureau seat and a model overlooking a cityscape are disposable successful the background.

The Kid With the Essay

Aschenbrenner is 25, though immoderate outlets person enactment him astatine 24. German-born, helium graduated Columbia valedictorian successful 2021 astatine 19, past joined OpenAI's Superalignment squad earlier being fired successful April 2024 implicit an alleged accusation leak helium disputes. His June 2024 essay, "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead,", argued AI would rapidly transcend quality capableness and became required speechmaking successful Silicon Valley. Minimum buy-in was reportedly $25 million. Backers included Stripe's Patrick and John Collison, erstwhile GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, capitalist Daniel Gross, and JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.

Act now: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable named his apical 10 AI stocks — and Nebius Group didn't marque the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

What Blew Up

In precocious July, AI-linked equities sold disconnected sharply. Situational Awareness was moving leverage up to 400% connected a concentrated book: agelong Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS), SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK), CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV), and Korea-listed SK Hynix, with shorts including Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) that moved against the fund. Nebius fell 17.98% betwixt July 1 and Aug 7. Lenders called collateral, and Aschenbrenner sold astir of his public-equity portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel astatine astir a 10% discount. These were leveraged losses connected nationalist bets; nary fraud oregon misappropriation has been alleged. He preserved backstage stakes: Anthropic (last valued adjacent $965 billion), compute supplier Fluidstack, and AI-chip startup MatX. The wipeout landed days earlier his planned wedding successful Carmel, California, to Avital Balwit, main of unit to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

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