AI investor Leopold Aschenbrenner forced to unwind all public stock positions after steep losses, sources say

The $24 billion hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner unwound all of its public stock holdings after big losses on artificial intelligence companies and a bad bet against software shares left it scrambling to raise cash, according to people familiar with the matter.The fund exited all of their public investments through essentially one trade with another major hedge fund, the people said. Public equities owned on both the long side and short side represented about two-thirds of the total holdings for the firm.Situational Awareness sustained significant losses in recent weeks as its portfolio of AI infrastructure investments such as SK Hynix declined while short positions in software companies such as Adobe moved sharply against it, the people said.Several of the firm's prime brokers — including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase —were working with the fund as it sought to meet margin requirements or reduce positions in an orderly fashion, according to people familiar with the discussions. The brokers were marketing a group of the firm's holdings on both the long and short side for sale prior to Thursday's start of trading, according to ...