Leopold Aschenbrenner’s fund is framed as a leverage blowup: up 1,600% overall, then liquidated after a roughly 17% adverse move on a 4x book erased about 2/3 of equity and a ~25% move would have wiped it. The central pivot is July 10’s SK Hynix bell-ringing top tick, followed by July 24’s investor letter and July 30’s one-block liquidation after brokers and rivals forced cash demands. Nearly everything public was closed except about $5 billion in Anthropic, making the vehicle functionally a venture fund even as the year-to-date return was still said to be up 80% versus a 67% month drawdown. The back half argues the thesis may still be right on AI infrastructure, but leverage made being right in the wrong way lethal; it ends with a Ledger sponsorship and a brief coda on Leopold being down bad.
Leopold Aschenbrenner’s fund was said to run up 1,600% and scale from a few hundred million dollars to $45 billion.
The book was described as 4x leveraged, with about $100 billion of nominal exposure against a $45 billion book; at that leverage, a roughly 17% adverse move was said to erase about 2/3 of equity, and about 25% to wipe the book.
The collapse from "absolute legend to fully liquidated" was said to take about 20 days, ending with liquidation on July 30.
July 10’s SK Hynix bell-ringing was called the top tick for Leopold and the starting marker for the unwind.
On July 24, Leopold sent investors a letter admitting damage; by July 30, after rivals pressed known positions and lenders demanded cash, the whole book sold in one block.
Citadel was cited as warning earlier in the week that interest rates might increase, adding more selling pressure, while rumors in early July said Leopold was trying to raise more money.
After liquidation, every public position was said to be closed except the Anthropic stake, with about $5 billion in Anthropic shares left and the fund effectively turned into a holding company for Anthropic.
Anthropic was said to be bought in a Series H at a $60 billion valuation, while secondary markets now put it around $1.2 trillion.
Citadel/Ken Griffin was said to buy Leopold’s position in one transaction after 6 hours with his team into the early hours before Monday open last week, at 40 to 80 cents on the dollar; the trade was said to generate $4 billion to $6 billion in a couple of hours.
The market was said to have targeted Leopold’s known positions; once they closed, the entire market ripped and the holdings discussed absolutely ripped on liquidation day.
Specific one-day post-liquidation moves cited were NOVA up 27%, IRON up 26.5%, BE up 25%, and SK Hynix up 16% intraday.
The argument was that Leopold’s thesis may have been directionally right, but leverage made the execution unsafe: being right in the wrong way was treated as equivalent to being wrong.
The infrastructure bull case stayed intact: more power, more memory, and more tokens were cited as ongoing demand drivers, while MSFT’s earnings were described as its best yet and software applications trends as positive.
Cybersecurity stocks and other names shorted in Leopold’s recent 13F filings were said to be up over the last couple of months, while NVDA was said to be up just 0.33% over the last month and a half.
China was said to be pushing tokens toward commodity status and shifting the fight toward an "energy war" instead of an "intelligence war," which was framed as slightly favoring China.
The core lesson was explicit: stay away from leverage, and definitely don’t run 4x on a $45 billion book; the line "we named the fund situational awareness, but lacked the situational awareness to sell when we were up 2,200% in 2 years" was used as the punchline.
The close turned to Leopold being "down bad," a wish that he pulls it together, and a hope that the fund claws its way back.