Leopold's $45B Fund Liquidated by Citadel After Leveraged AI Bet
ziv_ravid · x · 2026-07-31
The fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner faced a massive liquidation. Growing from $22.5M in late 2024 to roughly $45B, the fund's core strategy was a leveraged bet long on AI infrastructure and short on software.
When both sides of the trade moved against it simultaneously, prime brokers called for margin, resulting in Citadel acquiring the entire public book in a single block trade this morning. The author noted the irony: being a good AI researcher, predicting AGI timelines, and pricing semiconductor equities under 4x leverage are completely unrelated skills.
Related event: Ex-OpenAI Staffer's AI Hedge Fund Blows Up, Citadel Takes Over $16B(41 posts)→
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