Money Stuff: The Podcast · Friday, July 31, 2026
Leopold Ashanbrenner's hedge fund, Situational Awareness, which had substantial gains betting on AI companies, faced significant margin calls from prime brokers. Citadel reportedly acquired many of its public stock positions after the fund couldn't meet its obligations due to a recent drawdown in AI-related bets.
“So sorry. The news today is that he apparently got blown out of a lot of his positions because his prime brokers sent to margin calls? They like didn't have enough money, and so the prime brokers kind of helped him offload a lot of stuff.”
“Citadel, the big hedge fund, ended up owning a lot of his public stock positions.”
“Basically, like he got margin called, you know, because there's been a drawdown in AI bets in the last couple of weeks, and so he was very long a lot of AI companies, memory chip companies, things like that, and very short you know, like software companies, and both of those moved against him.”