Situational Awareness retains its prized Anthropic stake as Citadel swoops in to buy distressed AI portfolio

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund Situational Awareness just did the financial equivalent of selling the furniture to keep the house. The AI-centric fund unloaded the majority of its leveraged public equity holdings to Citadel, Ken Griffin’s trading powerhouse, in a deal that closed on or around July 30, 2026. The fund kept its crown jewel: a significant stake in Anthropic, the AI safety company whose valuation has ballooned to roughly $965 billion. That position alone accounts for approximately 20% of the fund’s total assets, or about $4 billion. What happened and why it matters Situational Awareness manages approximately $20 billion in assets. The fund had built up substantial leveraged positions in publicly traded AI stocks, a strategy that works beautifully on the way up and rather less beautifully on the way down. Citadel stepped in after what’s described as a brief bidding process. The deal allowed Situational Awareness to shed its most vulnerable positions, the leveraged public equity holdings, while retaining two categories of assets: its unlevered client-funded public positions and its private investments. The Anthropic position is the big one. Situational Awareness first...