Griffin's Citadel sold the $4 billion in assets it had acquired from the "AI-Nostradamus" fund

Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel has sold off more than $4 billion worth of positions from the crisis-stricken AI hedge fund Situational Awareness, which it acquired in July, according to the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and CNBC, citing a note from Griffin to investors.

In the report, Citadel commented for the first time on the firm’s acquisition of assets from Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund, which—before the problems at Situational Awareness arose—had been dubbed the “AI Nostradamus” (his hedge fund’s net return for the first five months of 2026 was 270%, and its assets totaled $45 billion as of early July, but amid the AI sell-off in July, Situational Awareness faced a capital shortfall).

“To date, working closely with our trading partners, we have successfully mitigated more than 80% of the aggregate risk of the initial portfolio [acquired from Situational Awareness],” Griffin stated in a memo. “As part of this effort, we have completed nearly 100 block trades (i.e., transactions concluded directly between major market participants—Oninvest note) with a total value exceeding $4 billion,” he added.

Griffin also confirmed that Citadel’s flagship fund—Wellington— posted a return of 5.94% in July—following the sale of its Situational Awareness assets—marking its best monthly performance since 2022.

Aschenbrenner’s AI-focused fund was forced to sell a significant portion of its assets in July — amid a sell-off of AI-related stocks that had been ongoing for several weeks at that point and investor concerns about the return on big tech companies’ massive investments in AI. After Citadel stepped in, trading in AI stocks rebounded. And in early August, Situational Awareness resumed investing, putting $400 million into a private company from Sequoia Capital’s portfolio.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor