Of all of the unlikely tales to emerge from the present AI frenzy, few are extra hanging than that of Leopold Aschenbrenner.
The 23-year-old’s profession didn’t precisely begin auspiciously: He frolicked on the philanthropy arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency alternate earlier than a controversial 12 months at OpenAI, the place he was finally fired. Then, simply two months after being booted out of probably the most influential firm in AI, he penned an AI manifesto that went viral—President Trump’s daughter Ivanka even praised it on social media—and used it as a launching pad for a hedge fund that now manages greater than $1.5 billion. That’s modest by hedge-fund requirements however outstanding for somebody barely out of faculty. Simply 4 years after graduating from Columbia, Aschenbrenner is holding personal discussions with tech CEOs, buyers, and policymakers who deal with him as a sort of prophet of the AI age.
It’s an astonishing ascent, one which has many asking not simply how this German-born early-career AI researcher pulled it off, however whether or not the hype surrounding him matches the truth. To some, Aschenbrenner is a uncommon genius who noticed the second—the approaching of humanlike synthetic normal intelligence, China’s accelerating AI race, and the huge fortunes awaiting those that transfer first—extra clearly than anybody else. To others, together with a number of former OpenAI colleagues, he’s a fortunate novice with no finance observe document, repackaging hype right into a hedge fund pitch.
His meteoric rise captures how Silicon Valley converts zeitgeist into capital—and the way that, in flip, may be parlayed into affect. Whereas critics query whether or not launching a hedge fund was merely a option to flip doubtful techno-prophecy into revenue, mates like Anthropic researcher Sholto Douglas body it otherwise—as a “idea of change.” Aschenbrenner is utilizing the hedge fund to garner a reputable voice within the monetary ecosystem, Douglas defined: “He’s saying, ‘I’ve a particularly excessive conviction [that this is] how the world goes to evolve, and I’m actually placing my cash the place my mouth is.”
However that additionally prompts the query: Why are so many prepared to belief this newcomer?
The reply is difficult. In conversations with over a dozen mates, former colleagues, and acquaintances of Aschenbrenner, in addition to buyers and Silicon Valley insiders, one theme retains surfacing: that Aschenbrenner has been capable of seize concepts which have been gathering momentum throughout Silicon Valley’s labs and use them as components for a coherent and convincing narrative which are like a blue plate particular to buyers with a wholesome urge for food for danger.
Aschenbrenner declined to remark for this story. Various sources had been granted anonymity owing to considerations over the potential penalties of talking about individuals who wield appreciable energy and affect in AI circles.
Many spoke of Aschenbrenner with a mix of admiration and wariness—“intense,” “scarily good,” “brash,” “assured.” A couple of described him as carrying the aura of a wunderkind, the sort of determine Silicon Valley has lengthy been desirous to anoint. Others, nonetheless, famous that his considering wasn’t particularly novel, simply unusually well-packaged and well-timed. But, whereas critics dismiss him as extra hype than perception, buyers Fortune spoke with see him otherwise, crediting his essays and early portfolio bets with uncommon foresight.
There isn’t a doubt, nonetheless, that Aschenbrenner’s rise displays a singular convergence: huge swimming pools of world capital desirous to trip the AI wave; a Valley enthralled by the prospect of reaching synthetic normal intelligence (AGI), or AI that matches or surpasses human intelligence; and a geopolitical backdrop that frames AI growth as a technological arms race with China.
Sketching the longer term
Inside sure corners of the AI world, Leopold Aschenbrenner was already acquainted as somebody who had written weblog posts, essays, and analysis papers that circulated amongst AI security circles, even earlier than becoming a member of OpenAI. However for most individuals, he appeared seemingly in a single day in June 2024. That’s when he self-published on-line a 165-page monograph known as Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead. The lengthy essay borrowed for its title a phrase already acquainted in AI circles, the place “situational consciousness” normally refers to fashions turning into conscious of their very own circumstances—a security danger. However Aschenbrenner used it to imply one thing else fully: the necessity for governments and buyers to acknowledge how rapidly AGI would possibly arrive, and what was at stake if the U.S. fell behind.
In a way, Aschenbrenner meant his manifesto to be the AI period’s equal of George Kennan’s “Lengthy Telegram,” through which the American diplomat and Russia professional sought to awaken elite opinion within the U.S. to what he noticed because the looming Soviet menace to Europe. Within the introduction, Aschenbrenner sketched a future he claimed was seen solely to a couple hundred prescient individuals, “most of them in San Francisco and the AI labs.” Not surprisingly, he included himself amongst these with “situational consciousness,” whereas the remainder of the world had “not the faintest glimmer of what’s about to hit them.” To most, AI seemed like hype or, at greatest, one other internet-scale shift. What he insisted he might see extra clearly was that LLMs had been enhancing at an exponential price, scaling quickly towards AGI, after which past to “superintelligence”—with geopolitical penalties and, for many who moved early, the possibility to seize the most important financial windfall of the century.
To drive the purpose residence, he invoked the instance of COVID in early 2020—arguing that just a few grasped the implications of a pandemic’s exponential unfold, understood the scope of the approaching financial shock, and profited by shorting earlier than the crash. “All I might do is purchase masks and quick the market,” he wrote. Equally, he emphasised that solely a small circle in the present day comprehends how rapidly AGI is coming, and those that act early stand to seize historic positive factors. And as soon as once more, he forged himself among the many prescient few.
However the core of Situational Consciousness’s argument wasn’t the COVID parallel. It was the argument that the maths itself—the scaling curves that recommended AI capabilities elevated exponentially with the quantity of knowledge and compute thrown on the identical fundamental algorithms—confirmed the place issues had been headed.
Douglas, now a tech lead on scaling reinforcement studying at Anthropic, is each a good friend and former roommate of Aschenbrenner’s who had conversations with him in regards to the monograph. He informed Fortune that the essay crystallized what many AI researchers had felt. ”If we consider that the pattern line will proceed, then we find yourself in some fairly wild locations,” Douglas mentioned. In contrast to many who centered on the incremental progress of every successive mannequin launch, Aschenbrenner was prepared to “actually wager on the exponential,” he mentioned.
An essay goes viral
Loads of lengthy, dense essays about AI danger and technique flow into yearly, most vanishing after temporary debates in area of interest boards like LessWrong, a web site based by AI theorist and “doomer” extraordinaire Eliezer Yudkowsky that turned a hub for rationalist and AI-safety concepts.
However Situational Consciousness hit otherwise. Scott Aaronson, a pc science professor at UT Austin who spent two years at OpenAI overlapping with Aschenbrenner, remembered his preliminary response: “Oh man, one other one.” However after studying, he informed Fortune: “I had the sense that that is truly the doc some normal or nationwide safety particular person goes to learn and say: ‘This requires motion.’” In a blog post, he known as the essay “some of the extraordinary paperwork I’ve ever learn,” saying Aschenbrenner “makes a case that, even after ChatGPT and all that adopted it, the world nonetheless hasn’t come near ‘pricing in’ what’s about to hit it.”
A longtime AI governance professional described the essays as “a giant achievement,” however emphasised that the concepts weren’t new: “He principally took what was already frequent knowledge inside frontier AI labs and wrote it up in a really properly packaged, compelling, easy-to-consume method.” The end result was to make insider considering legible to a much wider viewers at a fever-pitch second within the AI dialog.
Amongst AI security researchers, who fear primarily in regards to the methods through which AI would possibly pose an existential danger to humanity, the essays had been extra divisive. For a lot of, Aschenbrenner’s work felt like a betrayal, notably as a result of he had come out of these very circles. They felt their arguments urging warning and regulation had been repurposed right into a gross sales pitch to buyers. “Some people who find themselves very anxious about [existential risks] fairly dislike Leopold now due to what he’s carried out—they principally assume he offered out,” mentioned one former OpenAI governance researcher. Others agreed with most of his predictions and noticed worth in amplifying them.
Nonetheless, even critics conceded his knack for packaging and advertising. “He’s excellent at understanding the zeitgeist—what persons are keen on and what might go viral,” mentioned one other former OpenAI researcher. “That’s his superpower. He knew how one can seize the eye of highly effective individuals by articulating a story very favorable to the temper of the second: that the U.S. wanted to beat China, that we wanted to take AI safety extra critically. Even when the main points had been fallacious, the timing was good.”
That timing made the essays unavoidable. Tech founders and buyers shared Situational Consciousness with the type of urgency normally reserved for warm time period sheets, whereas policymakers and nationwide safety officers circulated it just like the juiciest categorised NSA evaluation.
As one present OpenAI staffer put it, Aschenbrenner’s talent is “realizing the place the puck is skating.”
A sweeping narrative paired with an funding car
Similtaneously the essays had been launched, Aschenbrenner launched Situational Consciousness LP, a hedge fund constructed across the theme of AGI, with its bets positioned in publicly traded corporations moderately than personal startups.
The fund was seeded by Silicon Valley heavyweights like investor and present Meta AI product lead Nat Friedman—Aschenbrenner reportedly linked with him after Friedman learn one in every of his weblog posts in 2023—in addition to Friedman’s investing accomplice Daniel Gross, and Patrick and John Collison, Stripe’s cofounders. Patrick Collison reportedly met Aschenbrenner at a 2021 dinner arrange by a connection “to debate their shared pursuits.” Aschenbrenner additionally introduced on Carl Shulman—a 45-year-old AI forecaster and governance researcher with deep ties within the AI security area and a previous stint at Peter Thiel’s Clarium Capital—to be the brand new hedge fund’s director of analysis.
In a four-hour podcast with Dwarkesh Patel tied to the launch, Aschenbrenner touted the explosive development he expects as soon as AGI arrives, saying, “The last decade after can be going to be wild,” through which “capital will actually matter.” If carried out proper, he mentioned, “there’s some huge cash to be made. If AGI had been priced in tomorrow, you could possibly perhaps make 100x.”
Collectively, the manifesto and the fund bolstered one another: Right here was a book-length funding thesis paired with a prognosticator with a lot conviction he was prepared to place critical cash on the road. It proved an irresistible mixture to a sure sort of investor. One former OpenAI researcher mentioned Friedman is understood for “zeitgeist hacking”—backing individuals who might seize the temper of the second and amplify it into affect. Supporting Aschenbrenner match that playbook completely.
Situational Consciousness’s technique is simple: It bets on world shares more likely to profit from AI—semiconductors, infrastructure, and energy corporations—offset by shorts on industries that would lag behind. Public filings reveal a part of the portfolio: A June SEC submitting confirmed stakes in U.S. corporations together with Intel, Broadcom, Vistra, and former Bitcoin-miner Core Scientific (which CoreWeave introduced it could purchase in July), all seen as beneficiaries of the AI build-out. To this point, it has paid off: The fund rapidly swelled to over $1.5 billion in property and delivered 47% positive factors, after charges, within the first half of this 12 months.
In accordance with a spokesperson, Situational Consciousness LP has world buyers, together with West Coast founders, household workplaces, establishments, and endowments. As well as, the spokesperson mentioned, Aschenbrenner “has virtually all of his internet value invested within the fund.”
To make sure, any image of a U.S. hedge fund’s holdings is incomplete. The publicly obtainable 13F filings solely cowl lengthy positions in U.S.-listed shares—shorts, derivatives, and worldwide investments aren’t disclosed—including an inevitable layer of thriller round what the fund is de facto betting on. Nonetheless, some observers have questioned whether or not Aschenbrenner’s early outcomes replicate talent or lucky timing. For instance, his fund disclosed roughly $459 million in Intel name choices in its first-quarter submitting—positions that later seemed prescient when Intel’s shares climbed over the summer time following a federal funding and a subsequent $5 billion stake from Nvidia.
However a minimum of some skilled monetary business professionals have come to view him otherwise. Veteran hedge fund investor Graham Duncan, who invested personally in Situational Consciousness LP and now serves as an advisor to the fund, mentioned he was struck by Aschenbrenner’s mixture of insider perspective and daring funding technique. “I discovered his paper provocative,” Duncan mentioned, including that Aschenbrenner and Shulman weren’t outsiders scanning alternatives however insiders constructing an funding car round their view. The fund’s thesis reminded him of the few contrarians who noticed the subprime collapse earlier than it hit—individuals like Michael Burry, whom Michael Lewis made well-known in his e book The Massive Brief. “If you wish to have variant notion, it helps to be slightly variant.”
He pointed to Situational Consciousness’s response to Chinese language startup DeepSeek’s January launch of its R1 open-source LLM, which many dubbed a “Sputnik second” that showcased China’s rising AI capabilities regardless of restricted funding and export controls. Whereas most buyers panicked, he mentioned Aschenbrenner and Shulman had already been monitoring it and noticed the selloff as an overreaction. They purchased as an alternative of offered, and even a significant tech fund reportedly held again from dumping shares after an analyst mentioned, “Leopold says it’s positive.” That second, Duncan mentioned, cemented Aschenbrenner’s credibility—although Duncan acknowledged, “He might but be confirmed fallacious.”
One other investor in Situational Consciousness LP, who manages a number one hedge fund, informed Fortune that he was struck by Aschenbrenner’s reply when requested why he was beginning a hedge fund centered on AI moderately than a VC fund, which appeared like the obvious alternative.
“He mentioned that AGI was going to be so impactful to the worldwide financial system that the one option to totally capitalize on it was to specific funding concepts in probably the most liquid markets on this planet,” he mentioned. “I’m a bit shocked by how briskly they’ve come up the training curve … They’re far more subtle on AI investing than anybody else I communicate to within the public markets.“
A Columbia ‘whiz child’ who went on to FTX and OpenAI
Aschenbrenner, born in Germany to 2 medical doctors, enrolled at Columbia when he was simply 15 and graduated valedictorian at 19. The longtime AI governance researcher, who described herself as an acquaintance of Aschenbrenner’s, recalled that she first heard of him when he was nonetheless an undergraduate.
“I heard about him as, ‘Oh, we heard about this Leopold Aschenbrenner child, he looks like a pointy man,’” she mentioned. “The vibe was very a lot a whiz child type of factor.”
That wunderkind repute solely deepened. At 17, Aschenbrenner gained a grant from economist Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures, and Cowen known as him an “economics prodigy.” Whereas nonetheless at Columbia, Aschenbrenner additionally interned on the World Priorities Institute, coauthoring a paper with economist Philip Trammell, and contributed essays to Works in Progress, a Stripe-funded publication that gave him one other foothold within the tech-intellectual world.
He was already embedded within the Efficient Altruism group—a controversial philosophy-driven motion influential in AI security circles—and cofounded Columbia’s EA chapter. That community finally led him to a job on the FTX Future Fund, a charity based by cryptocurrency alternate founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried was one other EA adherent who donated a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to causes, together with AI governance analysis, that aligned with EA’s philanthropic priorities.
The FTX Future Fund was designed to assist EA-aligned philanthropic priorities, though it was later discovered to have used cash from Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency alternate that was basically looted from account holders. (There isn’t a proof that anybody who labored on the FTX Future Fund knew the cash was stolen or did something unlawful.)
On the FTX Future Fund, Aschenbrenner labored with a small group that included William MacAskill, a cofounder of Efficient Altruism, and Avital Balwit—now chief of employees to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and, in response to a Situational Consciousness LP spokesperson, at present engaged to Aschenbrenner. Balwit wrote in a June 2024 essay that “these subsequent 5 years could be the previous few years that I work,” as a result of AGI would possibly “finish employment as I do know it”—a hanging mirror picture of Aschenbrenner’s conviction that the identical know-how will make his buyers wealthy.
However when Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire collapsed in November 2022, the Future Fund philanthropic effort imploded. “We had been a tiny group, after which from someday to the subsequent, it was all gone and related to an enormous fraud,” Aschenbrenner informed Dwarkesh Patel. “That was extremely powerful.”
Simply months after FTX collapsed, nonetheless, Aschenbrenner reemerged—at OpenAI. He joined the corporate’s newly launched “superalignment” group in 2023, created to sort out an issue nobody but is aware of how one can remedy: how one can steer and management future AI techniques that will be far smarter than any human being, and maybe smarter than all of humanity put collectively. Current strategies like reinforcement studying from human suggestions (RLHF) had confirmed considerably efficient for in the present day’s fashions, however they depend upon people having the ability to consider outputs—one thing which could not be doable if techniques surpassed human comprehension.
Aaronson, the UT laptop science professor, joined OpenAI earlier than Aschenbrenner and mentioned what impressed him was Aschenbrenner’s intuition to behave. Aaronson had been engaged on watermarking ChatGPT outputs to make AI-generated textual content simpler to establish. “I had a proposal for a way to try this, however the thought was simply type of languishing,” he mentioned. “Leopold instantly began saying, ‘Sure, we must be doing this, I’m going to take accountability for pushing it.’”
Others remembered him otherwise, as politically clumsy and generally conceited. “He was by no means afraid to be astringent at conferences or piss off the higher-ups, to a level I discovered alarming,” mentioned one present OpenAI researcher. A former OpenAI staffer, who mentioned they first turned conscious of Aschenbrenner when he gave a chat at an organization all-hands assembly that previewed themes he would later publish in Situational Consciousness, recalled him as “a bit abrasive.” A number of researchers additionally described a vacation social gathering the place, in an off-the-cuff group dialogue, Aschenbrenner informed then Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang what number of GPUs OpenAI had—“simply straight out within the open,” as one put it. Two individuals informed Fortune that they had immediately overheard the comment. Various individuals had been stunned, they defined, at how casually Aschenbrenner shared one thing so delicate. Via spokespeople, each Wang and Aschenbrenner denied that the alternate occurred.
“This account is fully false,” a consultant of Aschenbrenner informed Fortune. “Leopold by no means mentioned personal data with Alex. Leopold typically discusses AI scaling developments comparable to in Situational Consciousness, based mostly on public data and business developments.”
In April 2024, OpenAI fired Aschenbrenner, formally citing the leaking of inner data (the incident was not associated to the alleged GPU remarks to Wang). On the Dwarkesh podcast two months later, Aschenbrenner maintained the “leak” was “a brainstorming doc on preparedness, security, and safety measures wanted sooner or later on the trail to AGI” that he shared with three exterior researchers for suggestions—one thing he mentioned was “completely regular” at OpenAI on the time. He argued that an earlier memo through which he mentioned OpenAI’s safety was “egregiously inadequate to guard towards the theft of mannequin weights or key algorithmic secrets and techniques from overseas actors” was the true motive for his dismissal.
In accordance with information reviews, OpenAI did reply, by way of a spokesperson, that the considerations about safety that he raised internally (together with to the board) “didn’t result in his separation.” The spokesperson additionally mentioned they “disagree with lots of the claims he has since made” about OpenAI’s safety and the circumstances of his departure.
Both method, Aschenbrenner’s ouster got here amid broader turmoil: Inside weeks, OpenAI’s “superalignment” group—led by OpenAI’s cofounder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and AI researcher Jan Leike, and the place Aschenbrenner had labored—dissolved after each leaders departed from the corporate.
Two months later, Aschenbrenner printed Situational Consciousness and unveiled his hedge fund. The velocity of the rollout prompted hypothesis amongst some former colleagues that he had been laying the groundwork whereas nonetheless at OpenAI.
Returns vs. rhetoric
Even skeptics acknowledge the market has rewarded Aschenbrenner for channeling in the present day’s AGI hype, however nonetheless, doubts linger. “I can’t consider anyone that will belief any person that younger with no prior fund administration [experience],” mentioned a former OpenAI colleague who’s now a founder. “I’d not be an LP in a fund drawn by a baby until I felt there was actually sturdy governance in place.”
Others query the ethics of taking advantage of AI fears. “Many agree with Leopold’s arguments, however disapprove of stoking the U.S.-China race or elevating cash based mostly off AGI hype, even when the hype is justified,” mentioned one former OpenAI researcher. “Both he not thinks that [the existential risk from AI] is a giant deal or he’s arguably being disingenuous,” mentioned one other.
One former strategist throughout the Efficient Altruism group mentioned many in that world “are aggravated with him,” notably for selling the narrative that there’s a “race to AGI” that “turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Whereas taking advantage of stoking the thought of an arms race may be rationalized—since Efficient Altruists typically view creating wealth for the aim of then giving it away as virtuous—the previous strategist argued that “on the stage of Leopold’s fund, you’re meaningfully offering capital,” and that carries extra ethical weight.
The deeper fear, mentioned Aaronson, is that Aschenbrenner’s message—that the U.S. should speed up the tempo of AI growth in any respect prices as a way to beat China—has landed in Washington at a second when accelerationist voices like Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, and Michael Kratsios are ascendant. “Even when Leopold doesn’t consider that, his essay might be utilized by individuals who do,” Aaronson mentioned. In that case, his largest legacy will not be a hedge fund, however a broader mental framework that’s serving to to cement a technological Chilly Warfare between the U.S. and China.
If that proves true, Aschenbrenner’s actual impression could also be much less about returns and extra about rhetoric—the best way his concepts have rippled from Silicon Valley into Washington. It underscores the paradox on the middle of his story: To some, he’s a genius who noticed the second extra clearly than anybody else. To others, he’s a Machiavellian determine who repackaged insider security worries into an investor pitch. Both method, billions at the moment are driving on whether or not his wager on AGI delivers.
