Citadel buys bulk of Situational Awareness stocks after AI rout
Reports say Citadel buys bulk Situational Awareness public stocks after July’s AI rout. Ken Griffin’s firm took a large share of the leveraged portfolio at a discount, while the Leopold Aschenbrenner fund kept about $10 billion in assets, including Anthropic, per Cointelegraph citing Financial Times and Wall Street Journal coverage.
The sale matters because it shows how quickly AI-linked hedge fund bets can unwind when public markets turn, and how large trading firms step in when distressed stock books hit the market. More Fintech & Crypto Alerts cover similar market moves.
Key Takeaways
- Citadel reportedly bought a large portion of Situational Awareness’s leveraged public stock portfolio after July’s AI rout.
- The Financial Times said the book changed hands at a discount; the Wall Street Journal said the fund fell about 67% in July yet remained up about 80% year to date.
- Situational retained roughly $10 billion in stocks and private investments, including its Anthropic stake, Reuters reported via Cointelegraph.
- A planned $3.5 billion Anthropic share sale to a Greenoaks- and Sequoia-led group was withdrawn Thursday morning, the Journal reported.
- It remains unclear which public names, including Bitcoin miners, were in the Citadel deal.
What did Citadel buy from Situational Awareness?
According to Cointelegraph, Ken Griffin’s Citadel reportedly acquired a large proportion of the public stock portfolio held by Situational Awareness, the hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner.
The Financial Times first reported Thursday that Citadel bought the discounted portfolio after heavy losses during July’s artificial intelligence stock market sell-off. Cointelegraph said Situational Awareness and Citadel had not responded to requests for comment by publication.
Why did Situational Awareness sell after the AI rout?
The Wall Street Journal, citing a person who saw an investor letter, said the fund fell about 67% in July. The same letter said the fund remained up about 80% for the year. The Financial Times had previously reported the fund was up 439% through June.
Those reports suggested Situational had approached existing investors and lenders for fresh capital and offered some investors the option to buy portfolio assets. The Journal also reported the fund needed cash to meet margin calls from lenders. Reuters separately reported the leveraged-portfolio detail but said it could not determine whether formal margin calls had been issued before the sale.
What assets did the fund keep after the deal?
Reuters said Situational retained roughly $10 billion in stocks and private investments, including Anthropic. The Journal reported the fund had agreed late Wednesday to sell $3.5 billion of Anthropic shares to a group led by Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital before withdrawing from that deal Thursday morning.
Several stocks linked to the fund fell sharply in July: Sandisk remained down about 44% for the month even after a 26% Thursday bounce, CoreWeave fell nearly 26%, and Bloom Energy was down around 32%, Yahoo Finance data showed via Cointelegraph. An SEC filing showed direct positions in those names as of March 31, plus about $1.11 billion in shares of seven Bitcoin mining companies including Iren, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms and CleanSpark. Cointelegraph said it remains unclear which stocks were part of the Citadel transaction or whether any Bitcoin miner positions were retained.
Who is behind Situational Awareness?
The fund takes its name from Aschenbrenner’s 2024 essay series “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead,” which argued artificial general intelligence could arrive by 2027 and drive huge demand for computing power and electricity. Before OpenAI, Aschenbrenner was on the FTX Future Fund’s five-person team and signed its November 2022 resignation notice as FTX collapsed.