Story perspectives

Citadel Buys Majority of AI Hedge Fund After Margin Calls

7/30/2026

Summary

Story summary

Citadel, a hedge fund, bought a majority of Situational Awareness’s AI equities from Leopold Aschenbrenner.
The fund, founded by researcher Aschenbrenner, had $45 billion in assets and $13.68 billion exposure with $8.46 billion of puts on compute and bitcoin-miner assets.
Margin calls from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan forced the sale, leading Millennium Management and Jane Street to bid and fund to retain a $965 billion Anthropic stake.

History

Historical Context

In 1998 the highly leveraged hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management lost $4.6 billion, prompting the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to convene 14 major banks—including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan—for a $3.6 billion rescue that averted a market panic. The episode showed how concentrated derivative positions can create systemic risk, a lesson echoed today as Citadel’s margin-call-driven sale mirrors LTCM’s crunch.

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Story summary

Citadel, a hedge fund, bought a majority of Situational Awareness’s AI equities from Leopold Aschenbrenner.
The fund, founded by researcher Aschenbrenner, had $45 billion in assets and $13.68 billion exposure with $8.46 billion of puts on compute and bitcoin-miner assets.
Margin calls from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan forced the sale, leading Millennium Management and Jane Street to bid and fund to retain a $965 billion Anthropic stake.

1 / 2