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Posted on 07/31/2026 10:58:50 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Leopold Aschenbrenner was hailed as the ‘Nostradamus of AI.’ But his Situational Awareness hedge fund took on too much leverage, leading to a crash he never saw coming.
When the week began, Leopold Aschenbrenner was preparing for his wedding. The plan was for a multiday celebration in Carmel, a seaside town in Northern California, with the ceremony at a Tuscan-style villa and the send-off at a spa in the forest. There would also be a pre-wedding colloquium to discuss ideas in panels and breakout sessions. The couple’s only request: no gifts.
The 24-year-old investor had amassed a fortune by promising he could see into the future, building a $45 billion investing powerhouse that primarily bought stocks in the AI trade. For months, the holdings of his hedge fund Situational Awareness shot up in value, as did Aschenbrenner’s standing in the upper echelons of San Francisco’s elite.
But by the time guests began to arrive, his fund was unraveling—and Wall Street was closing in.
Aschenbrenner borrowed too much money to make his AI bets, leaving him at risk as they faltered. With the value of his portfolio tumbling, he scrambled to raise cash to satisfy his lenders, appealing to some of the largest hedge funds and selling billions of dollars in holdings in a fire sale to Ken Griffin’s Citadel.
Aschenbrenner first made his way to California, after graduating from Columbia University in 2021 at age 19. An early convert to principles of the effective altruism movement, he began working for the philanthropic arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX before joining OpenAI, where he worked in the niche field of AI...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
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I hope Ken Griffin attends the colloquium.
I didn’t click on the link, but by the looks of the guy, he probably married a dude
There’s no doubt nor mystery that overleveraging can produce catastrophic results if and when a market turns against you.
But these whiz-bang stocks he was heavily invested in and margined to the hilt had dropped something like 30%, in a relatively orderly fashion culminating in about 35% down on this guy’s particular doomsday, over the prior month.
A skilled investor would have sussed this out MUCH earlier.
I’d imagine a 24-year old whipersnapper hedge-fund dude would take much better notice that his positions were deteriorating badly. That part I do not understand, unless it is plain old hubris aka the joy of youth.
“He is marrying the chief of staff to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and lives in a San Francisco mansion not far from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.”
Was he marrying a male or a female?
“That part I do not understand, unless it is plain old hubris aka the joy of youth.”
Back about 20 years ago my wife’s acquaintance drove up in a brand new Viper showing off his fiance and her multi-carat diamond bragging about all the homes he owned and the money he was making.
The next year he was down to one house with all his relatives living with him.
The caterer had better ask for cash up-front....
Male
He went to Columbia, so its a coin-toss.
This is a story as old as time. He was a smart, credentialed, connected young guy who was in the right place at the right time and rode the wave. Then the wave crashed and his life fell apart. Want to see the previous chapter in this story? Look at private real estate funds in the early 2000s before the 2008 real estate meltdown. There were a lot of kings in the real estate fund world who had hundreds of millions being thrown at them by university endowments and state and private pension plans. Then the market crashed and no one listened to them anymore. Or the first generation of hedge funds in the 1990s before the Lehman Brothers collapse. Use whatever truism that you want - everything old is new again, those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it, history repeats itself, etcetera.
Flying high in April, shot down in July.
> The couple’s only request: no gifts. <
Given that his hedge fund is falling apart, he might want to rethink that.
Toasters and blenders aren’t free, and he’ll need at least one of each in his family home. Any extras he can pawn.
who is the chief of staff to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. csn you provide a picture?
Thought for 13s
Avital Balwit is the Chief of Staff to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
newsbytesapp.com
Multiple reports from June 2026 (based on a Bloomberg interview with Amodei) confirm that she is his sole direct report. The rest of the executive team reports to his sister and company president, Daniela Amodei, who handles day-to-day operations. Amodei has described this structure as “incredibly freeing,” allowing him to focus on strategy, research direction, culture, and longer-term issues.
inc.com
Balwit’s personal site and X/Twitter bio also list her in this role. She is a Rhodes Scholar who previously researched transformative AI at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and at the University of Virginia, worked on AI safety/biosecurity grantmaking, managed a political campaign, and has written essays on AI’s societal impacts.
avitalbalwit.com
Here are recent/public photos of her:as.virginia.edu
binance.com
thefp.com
3 web pages
Explore Avital Balwit’s AI safety research
Learn about Daniela Amodei’s role
Please provide a direct image link
is she marrying leopold ashenbrenner?
...
continue
Thought for 9s
Yes, they are getting married this weekend.According to a detailed Wall Street Journal report published today (July 31, 2026), Leopold Aschenbrenner and Avital Balwit are holding a multiday wedding celebration in Carmel, California (a coastal town in Northern California).
wsj.com
Key details from the reporting:The ceremony is planned at a Tuscan-style villa.
There’s a send-off event at a spa in the forest.
The couple also scheduled a pre-wedding colloquium with panels and breakout sessions to discuss ideas (very on-brand for the effective-altruism / AI-safety / Silicon Valley intellectual circle they both come from).
Their only request of guests: no gifts.
Wedding guests were already beginning to arrive in Carmel this week—right as Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund was forced to liquidate the bulk of its public equity positions amid heavy losses and margin pressure.
They have been engaged since at least 2025 (they met while both worked at the FTX Future Fund around 2022). Multiple outlets including CNBC (citing sources) and the WSJ confirm the wedding is proceeding this weekend despite the dramatic fund events of the past few days.
wsj.com
So as of right now (evening of Friday, July 31, 2026), the wedding is still on trac
I asked x.com/grok about ashenbrenner’s fiancee. here is the answer:
who is the chief of staff to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. csn you provide a picture?
Thought for 13s
Avital Balwit is the Chief of Staff to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
newsbytesapp.com
Multiple reports from June 2026 (based on a Bloomberg interview with Amodei) confirm that she is his sole direct report. The rest of the executive team reports to his sister and company president, Daniela Amodei, who handles day-to-day operations. Amodei has described this structure as “incredibly freeing,” allowing him to focus on strategy, research direction, culture, and longer-term issues.
inc.com
Balwit’s personal site and X/Twitter bio also list her in this role. She is a Rhodes Scholar who previously researched transformative AI at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and at the University of Virginia, worked on AI safety/biosecurity grantmaking, managed a political campaign, and has written essays on AI’s societal impacts.
avitalbalwit.com
Here are recent/public photos of her:as.virginia.edu
binance.com
thefp.com
3 web pages
Explore Avital Balwit’s AI safety research
Learn about Daniela Amodei’s role
Please provide a direct image link
is she marrying leopold ashenbrenner?
...
continue
Thought for 9s
Yes, they are getting married this weekend.According to a detailed Wall Street Journal report published today (July 31, 2026), Leopold Aschenbrenner and Avital Balwit are holding a multiday wedding celebration in Carmel, California (a coastal town in Northern California).
wsj.com
Key details from the reporting:The ceremony is planned at a Tuscan-style villa.
There’s a send-off event at a spa in the forest.
The couple also scheduled a pre-wedding colloquium with panels and breakout sessions to discuss ideas (very on-brand for the effective-altruism / AI-safety / Silicon Valley intellectual circle they both come from).
Their only request of guests: no gifts.
Wedding guests were already beginning to arrive in Carmel this week—right as Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund was forced to liquidate the bulk of its public equity positions amid heavy losses and margin pressure.
They have been engaged since at least 2025 (they met while both worked at the FTX Future Fund around 2022). Multiple outlets including CNBC (citing sources) and the WSJ confirm the wedding is proceeding this weekend despite the dramatic fund events of the past few days.
wsj.com
So as of right now (evening of Friday, July 31, 2026), the wedding is still on track
Well, Mario is a guy's name, but I wondered if a Dario had the anatomy to produce milk, like a dairy.
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. First slowly. Then suddenly.”
— Hemingway
I think he DID.
True that.
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