AI savants are known for their bold predictions.
Leopold Aschenbrenner, the so-called “Nostradamus of AI,” took things to another level, reportedly promising his future wife he would someday buy her not a yacht or a mansion, but a galaxy.
The 24-year-old German-born wunderkind married the chief of staff to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei earlier this month.
Just days earlier, his massively leveraged hedge fund imploded — plunging 67% through July 30 and forcing him to unload most of its public-stock portfolio to Ken Griffin’s Citadel.
Aschenbrenner signed the paperwork for the emergency sale early Thursday morning before heading to Carmel, Calif., for his wedding that weekend, according to the Wall Street Journal.
One speaker reportedly thanked Griffin “for making it all possible,” while another guest gushed about Aschenbrenner’s promise to someday buy his new wife a galaxy.
Buying a chunk of universe had been on Aschenbrenner’s mind for years, according to the article, with the investor repeatedly mentioning the idea to incredulous friends.
Aschenbrenner did a stint for Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Future Fund and stayed with his now-wife, Avital Balwit, at the 600-acre Bahamas resort where FTX executives lived.
Aschenbrenner and Bankman-Fried were members of 17 Signal group chats together — including “EA [effective altruism] Discussion” and “Anthropic Chat” — while the Future Fund team met with SBF and members of his inner circle in a sixth-floor penthouse, according to documents from Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial cited by the Journal.
Aschenbrenner resigned from the Future Fund with his colleagues when FTX collapsed into bankruptcy in November 2022.
He has said he and Bankman-Fried had already fallen out over disagreements involving biosecurity grants.
Less than two years later, Aschenbrenner launched Situational Awareness, eventually building it into a $45 billion hedge fund before its heavily leveraged bets on AI spectacularly unraveled over the summer.
The breathtaking rise came despite Aschenbrenner having virtually no previous investing experience.
The Berlin-raised whiz kid entered Columbia University at just 15 and graduated as valedictorian at 19, becoming deeply involved along the way in the effective altruism movement and its concerns about the potentially catastrophic risks posed by advanced AI.
After the FTX debacle, Aschenbrenner landed at OpenAI in 2023, ruffling feathers by warning about potential Chinese spies inside the company and later sent its board a memo blasting its security protocols.
He subsequently claimed he was told it was racist to raise concerns about espionage by the Chinese Communist Party, according to the Journal.
OpenAI denies this.
Aschenbrenner’s tenure ended messily.
He was fired after sharing information that OpenAI executives considered sensitive with Holden Karnofsky, an influential figure in the effective altruism movement who is married to Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, according to the Journal.
Aschenbrenner has maintained that the information wasn’t confidential and claimed OpenAI had other reasons for firing him. OpenAI disputed his account.
“Leopold was not fired for raising security concerns, internally or with our board,” an OpenAI spokeswoman told the Journal.
Aschenbrenner said he walked away from nearly $1 million in OpenAI equity rather than sign a nondisclosure agreement required to receive it.
He soon made a much bigger bet on AI.
In 2024, Aschenbrenner published a sprawling 165-page manifesto, titled “Situational Awareness,” predicting the arrival of superintelligent AI and arguing that the technology would usher in one of the “most intense and volatile moments of human history.”
He then turned that thesis into an investment strategy.
Despite being barely old enough to drink and having no previous professional investing experience, Aschenbrenner attracted money from heavyweight backers including trading giant Jane Street and Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, according to the Journal.
Situational Awareness piled into companies across the AI supply chain, including semiconductor, energy and software stocks, while also buying stakes in private companies.
Situational Awareness borrowed about $3 for every $1 of capital it held, according to the Journal, leaving the fund dangerously exposed when a July tech selloff hammered its concentrated AI bets.
As the stocks sank, rival traders began noticing trouble in positions associated with the fund and Aschenbrenner found himself desperately hunting for cash to satisfy his lenders’ margin calls.
At one point, he considered selling a $3.5 billion stake in Anthropic.
Instead, he struck the emergency deal to sell most of his publicly traded portfolio to Citadel at a discount.
The transaction proved lucrative for Griffin’s hedge fund giant. The AI stocks Citadel acquired subsequently rallied, helping deliver its flagship fund its best month in years, according to the Journal.
Situational Awareness, meanwhile, took a drastic fall through July 30.
The aftermath hit some of the sophisticated investors who had backed the young fund manager. Jane Street lost about $15 billion in July — its worst monthly loss ever, the Journal reported.
Federal regulators are now scrutinizing Situational Awareness’s trading activity, though no formal allegations of wrongdoing have been made.
“We are a highly-regulated business and will cooperate to the fullest extent with any regulatory request,” Situational Awareness has said.
The Post has sought comment from Aschenbrenner.
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