Citadel Soars 6% In July Thanks To Situational Awareness Firesale Liquidation

Some have speculated that one of the most proximal catalysts behind the collapse of Leopold Aschenbrenner’s $45 billion and epically misnamed Situational Awareness hedge fund, besides his use of batshit insane Total Return Swap leverage that would make an average Korean momentum-chasing degen blush with envy, was Citadel’s vocal warning early last week that the Fed would/should hike rates, a contrarian appeal which, while not taken seriously by any Fed watcher, may have spooked markets to the necessary and sufficient breaking point that forced the flood of margin calls that ultimately wiped out Leopold. 

While we doubt that Citadel was so tactically engaged as to crush the young and inexperienced Leopold and hear the lamentations of his soon to be wife with fringer notes, we are certain that his massive TRS leverage – as much as 4x on both side of a pair trade that had gone terribly wrong by being long chips and short software - and which we warned back in June was clearly in play and would lead to ruin for one or more funds, was more than sufficient to force the hedge fund’s liquidation by bringing its assets under management from $45 billion at the start of July to just $10 billion at the end.  

More importantly, it led to a blowout month for none other than the flagship fund of Ken Griffin’s Citadel which jumped 5.9% in July, a month when most of its peers suffered major losses (look no further than Coatue’s 8% drop) after it bought billions of dollars of AI stocks in a fire sale from Aschenbrenner’s now collapsed hedge fund Situational Awareness.

Citadel, which manages more than $71bn, has now seen its Wellington fund surge 12% so far in 2026 after a turbulent July which ultimately generated half the firm’s YTD gains, the FT reported citing people who have seen the numbers.

After a huge rally in AI-related equities earlier in the year, hedge funds were smashed by a historic collapse in high beta momo stocks in July which nuked most popular holdings such as South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix which tumbled almost 50% from a peak in June. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 briefly veered into correction territory last week, shortly before the deal to sell Situational Awareness’s book.

More than a month after we warned that massive TRS leverage would lead to one or more Archegos-like casualties (with or without the criminal element)…

Has anyone done the analysis which funds have the most TRS on AI, aka Archegos 2.0

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 12, 2026

… that’s precisely what happened when Aschenbrenner’s – which notched gains of more than 400% in the first half of the year with its highly leveraged bets on AI companies – became the most prominent casualty of the violent momentum reversal.

The sell-off crippled the fund, pushing it to sell the majority of its public equity positions to Griffin’s firm last week in a quick-fire process that took place over less than 24 hours. Citadel approached Situational Awareness late on July 29 and negotiated with the firm overnight. It signed a contract in less than 24 hours for the sale, which came with a 10% discount, Bloomberg has previously reported. 

Citadel’s own funds had struggled to generate big returns during the first weeks of July amid the sell-off in equities. As of July 24, Wellington was roughly flat month-to-date. In the three days prior to Citadel’s acquisition of Situational Awareness, stocks fell further.

Citadel competed with trading firm Jane Street and fellow multi-manager hedge fund giant Millennium for the purchase of Situational Awareness’s equities book last week, eventually winning the auction with about a 10% discount, FT sources reported. 

Separately, before the sale to Citadel, Silicon Valley venture capital firms Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital were approached about taking over the some of the privately held stakes in Situational Awareness’ portfolio. 

The troubled fund also had close links to some of the world’s biggest investment banks. Situational Awareness used prime brokers including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Bank of America according to filings.

In an exclusive report this morning, the WSJ wrote that Situational Awareness was backed by a wide lineup of Silicon Valley and Wall Street investors who put their faith in a 20-something founder with no prior professional investing experience.  Among the fund’s investors are Dan Sundheim, founder of the hedge fund D1 Capital Partners and a major SpaceX shareholder; Silicon Valley investor Neil Mehta, co-founder of venture-capital firm Greenoaks; the foundation of Gaurav Kapadia, founder of investment firm XN; and Feroz Dewan, the former head of public equities at Tiger Global Management, according to people familiar with the matter.

Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, and Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, who lead Meta Platforms’ AI efforts, are among Situational’s other investors. Some investors might have invested through their foundations, family offices or other entities.

Situational was also backed by foundations including the Laniakea Charitable Foundation and Good Forever Foundation, according to tax and regulatory filings reviewed by fund-data tracker Old Well Labs. The president and director of Laniakea is Matthew Wage, a Jane Street trader, tax filings show. Good Forever is a grant-making organization focused on AI safety and AI policy. 

Aksia, a research and advisory firm to institutions including pensions, family offices and sovereign-wealth funds, made note of Aschenbrenner’s intellect and network in a March 2025 assessment for clients after meeting with him. But it also wrote that prospective investors in Situational “may want to be wary of hubris leading to risk management issues, particularly if the use of leverage is indeed significant,” according to a copy of the note viewed by The Wall Street Journal. 

The last ditch rescue by Citadel was not only a brilliant distressed investment which helped generate billions in short-term profits, it also helped to stem a broader market rout because Situational Awareness’s forced selling had been exacerbating the sell-off in AI stocks. Many of Aschenbrenner’s biggest investments according to his last regulatory filing – including Bloom Energy and Sandisk – rallied the day after the sale. The latter has gained nearly 30% since last Wednesday.

“These are names that trade really aggressively,” said one hedge fund manager who had invested in similar positions to those of Situational Awareness. “They were highly volatile, but they were liquid. So Citadel made a killing.”

As the FT notes, Griffin is known to charge towards firms that run into trouble. The day Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, Griffin sent more than a dozen of his executives to Houston on a chartered Gulfstream jet to dig into its failure, and later poached several of the company’s top analysts. The hedge fund has also stepped in before to buy the remains of failed competitors. In 2006, Citadel bought the entire trading book of Amaranth Advisors alongside JPMorgan after the fund blew up from bad bets on natural gas. A year later, it pulled off a similar coup by snapping up the credit portfolio of Sowood Capital Management when it collapsed.

“It’s classic Ken,” said one former employee, who worked closely with the Citadel founder. “He has played that card many times . . . There are very few places in the world who can do what he did.”

As for Leopold, don’t cry for the former OpenAI staffer. He may have blown up this time but after his stint working for SBF at FTX, he surely has learned how to survive blow ups such as this one, and as long as he has his freedom (unlike his former boss) he will emerge somewhere (assuming he has an ironclad prenup of course). 

The Dario curse:

SBF invested in Anthropic. Stake now worth billions, but fund blows up (SBF in prison)

Leopold invested in Anthropic. Stake now worth billions, but fund blows up (Leopold getting married)

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 30, 2026

As the WSJ notes, Aschenbrenner started his hedge fund in 2024. After a string of prescient stock picks, including memory-chip makers SK Hynix and Sandisk, his assets under management swelled, placing the firm among the fastest-growing hedge funds in years. The rapid rise earned him a reputation as a stock-picking wunderkind and the nickname “the Nostradamus of AI.” 

In retrospect, he was just a massively levered degen who, like the infamous Taleb turkey, was lucky for 99.9% of the ride… and then Thanksgiving happened.