Situational Awareness Hedge Fund Sells Its AI Portfolio but Keeps Its Anthropic Stake

Situational Awareness, the hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has reportedly liquidated its entire portfolio of public securities, TechCrunch reported on July 30, 2026. The cause was losses on leveraged positions in AI stocks. The fund's private stake in Anthropic, however, remains untouched.

Who is behind the fund

Leopold Aschenbrenner is one of the best-known researchers to leave OpenAI in 2024. That same year he published a sweeping document titled "Situational Awareness," a warning about the dangers of accelerated AI development that spread widely through the tech community. After leaving the company, Aschenbrenner founded a hedge fund of the same name, focused on investing in the AI sector.

The fund's strategy was built on leverage: borrowed money used to take positions in publicly traded AI stocks.

• Founder: Leopold Aschenbrenner, former member of OpenAI's safety team
• Strategy: leveraged positions in public AI stocks
• Public portfolio: reportedly fully liquidated as of July 30, 2026
• Retained: stake in the private AI company Anthropic

Why the public portfolio had to be sold

Leverage multiplies both gains and losses. According to TechCrunch, when the value of the fund's public AI positions dropped sharply, brokers issued margin calls: cover the losses immediately or close the positions. The fund was forced to sell its public holdings.

AI stocks are highly volatile: rapid sector growth alternates with sharp pullbacks driven by regulatory changes, competition and macroeconomic factors. Leverage in such a sector creates heightened risk at precisely the moment of maximum market stress, when exiting positions is least profitable.

Why the Anthropic stake remains an ace

Anthropic is a private AI company whose shares do not trade on an exchange. Private stakes cannot be forcibly sold in a margin call: they sit beyond the reach of brokers' demands. That is what allowed the fund to keep its Anthropic position even as its public portfolio was fully liquidated.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei and other OpenAI alumni. The company, which develops the Claude model, has raised major investments from Amazon and Google; in its latest rounds its valuation exceeded $60 billion. A successful IPO or sale of the company could bring the fund a significant return on its investment.

"He still has cards left to play," is how

TechCrunch characterizes the fund's position.

What this means

The Situational Awareness story is a clear lesson in the risks of leveraged strategies in the AI sector: forced liquidation hits exactly when funds least want to exit their positions. Private stakes in companies like Anthropic protect against that scenario, provided the fund has enough resources to ride out public-market volatility until the exit.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Situational Awareness fund?

Situational Awareness is a hedge fund founded by Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former member of OpenAI's safety team. The name refers to his well-known 2024 document on the dangers of accelerating AI. The fund specialized in leveraged investments in public AI stocks.

Why is Anthropic harder to sell than public stocks?

Anthropic is not a public company: its shares do not trade on an exchange and are not subject to brokers' demands for immediate coverage of margin positions. The stake can be sold only on the secondary market for private equity or when the company goes public in an IPO.