Citadel buys bulk of Situational Awareness stock portfolio after AI rout: Reports

Ken Griffin’s Citadel reportedly bought a large proportion of the public stock portfolio of Situational Awareness, the hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner.The Financial Times first reported Thursday that Citadel bought the discounted portfolio after heavy losses during July’s artificial intelligence stock market rout. The transaction followed Aschenbrenner’s fund falling about 67% in July, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing a person who saw a letter sent to investors. The letter said the fund remained up about 80% for the year. The Financial Times previously reported the fund was up 439% through June.Those reports suggested Situational had approached existing investors and lenders for fresh capital and offered some investors the option to buy portfolio assets. The Journal also reported Situational needed cash to meet margin calls from its lenders and that the fund agreed late Wednesday to sell $3.5 billion of Anthropic shares to a group led by Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital before withdrawing from the deal Thursday morning.Reuters separately reported the leveraged-portfolio detail but said it could not determine whether formal margin calls ...