Aschenbrenner's Hedge Fund Invests $400M in Chip Startup Source Foundry

Situational Awareness, a hedge fund specializing in artificial intelligence investments, has invested $400M in the startup Source Foundry. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal. Together with earlier infusions, the fund's total investment in the company has reached $500M.

Source Foundry was founded by researchers from Stanford who aim to make chip manufacturing faster and cheaper. The new bet looks notable against the backdrop of the fund's own recent troubles.

Rise and Losses

Situational Awareness was created in 2024 by Leopold Aschenbrenner — a former OpenAI researcher who is now around twenty-five years old and who, at the time the fund launched, had no trading experience whatsoever. By available accounts, the early results were impressive, yet in recent months the fund has suffered heavy losses amid a slump in the shares of companies tied to AI infrastructure.

In late July, Situational Awareness sold most of its public portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel, while keeping its stake in Anthropic. The fund's assets under management have reportedly shrunk from $20 billion to $10 billion.

For all these difficulties, as the publication wryly notes, the turmoil didn't stop Aschenbrenner from getting married.

Source: TechCrunch