Aschenbrenner's Fund Seeks Fresh Capital

Per the Financial Times, Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness is seeking fresh capital after July losses tore through a year that had the roughly $20 billion fund up about 439% after fees through June. Its largest first-quarter positions, Nebius, Sandisk, Micron, and CoreWeave, are each down more than 35% this month. The fund told investors on July 24 that it views the selloff as a buying opportunity, pointing to a potential Anthropic IPO as the sector's next catalyst.

Leverage explains the speed of the reversal. The fund amplified concentrated bets on AI infrastructure through several large prime brokers, reportedly running as high as four times at the peak, which works in both directions. Market accounts put the equity book near $6.5 billion today against $13.7 billion in the March filings, with an Anthropic position now representing roughly half of remaining assets and questions circulating about whether that stake has been pledged or sold. Those figures are estimates rather than disclosures, which is itself part of the story.

The pattern is familiar from the credit side of the same trade. AI infrastructure has been financed with borrowed money at every layer: private credit funds facing their own redemption wave were penciled in for as much as half the datacenter buildout's external financing, and Nvidia is in talks to guarantee a quarter trillion in OpenAI obligations. Leverage on a rising asset is invisible until the asset stops rising, and then it sets the pace. A fund up 439% asking for capital six weeks later is what that looks like at the fastest-moving end.

What to watch is whether concentrated AI holders meet redemptions by selling the liquid names, which would pressure exactly the infrastructure equities the thesis rests on.