--- title: "\"AI Genius Youth\" Leopold got liquidated! The young gun still couldn't beat the old hand!" type: "Topics" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/topics/43104939.md" description: "The most ruthless capital market story of 2026: a young AI stock god was thoroughly crushed by Wall Street veterans. A 25-year-old young man made nearly 440% in two years. Five weeks later, his positions were cleared out by Wall Street. His name is Leopold Aschenbrenner. You probably haven't heard of him, but in the AI circle, he's a legendary figure. Graduated first in his class at Columbia University at age 19. Joined OpenAI as a researcher at age 22. In 2024, he was fired and left due to alleged confidentiality breaches..." datetime: "2026-07-31T04:01:36.000Z" locales: - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/topics/43104939.md) - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/topics/43104939.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/topics/43104939.md) author: "[热点君](https://longbridge.com/en/profiles/1450684.md)" --- # "AI Genius Youth" Leopold got liquidated! The young gun still couldn't beat the old hand! The most ruthless capital market story of 2026: a young AI stock god was thoroughly crushed by Wall Street veterans. A 25-year-old young man, in two years, earned nearly 440%. Five weeks later, his positions were wiped out by Wall Street. His name is Leopold Aschenbrenner. You probably haven't heard of him, but in the AI circle, he's a legendary figure. Graduated first in his class at Columbia University at 19. Joined OpenAI as a researcher at 22. In 2024, he was fired for alleged leaks and left to write a 165-page prophetic essay on the AI industry, "Situational Awareness." The entire article argued only one thing: AI is not just a technological upgrade, but a human-level discontinuity. **Artificial intelligence will require unprecedented construction in chips, memory, and power.** ## Then he got serious He had never worked in a fund and had no investment experience. Relying solely on this article, he secured funding from Stripe co-founders Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, along with other top Silicon Valley players (news reports indicate a seed round of approximately $225 million). He launched a hedge fund named Situational Awareness. By the end of June this year, net asset value had surged 439%. You read that right. At its peak, he held exposure of nearly $45 billion. > Bloomberg/CNBC reported lower net AUM figures (approx. $20 billion, dropping to ~$10 billion after liquidation). The $45 billion likely represents leveraged exposure or a point-in-time peak. Just two years prior, the fund's seed round was only slightly over $200 million. Someone who had never touched a trading board turned it into the hottest story on Wall Street at that time. The chart shows the latest public 13F disclosure; actual holdings may be delayed and are for reference only. Honestly, isn't this the script we believers in AI always dreamed of? You understood the era, you went all in, and the era rewarded you. His strategy was logically flawless: - Long every link in the AI infrastructure chain: compute $Coreweave(CRWV.US), power $Bloom Energy(BE.US), natural gas $EQT(EQT.US), storage $Sandisk(SNDK.US), optical modules $Lumentum(LITE.US), and a bunch of companies transitioning from mining to AI compute, such as $IREN(IREN.US). Simultaneously shorting software stocks he believed would be destroyed by AI, like $Adobe(ADBE.US), etc. Many "winners of AI," shorts on "losers of AI." A self-consistent worldview directly translated into a portfolio. Sounds very smart, right? A dozen tickers, seemingly diversified, were actually the same bet written down ten times over. Those compute stocks, transformed miners, optical modules, and memory stocks rose together because behind them was the same event: AI requires 疯狂 spending to build data centers. **And when they fell, they fell together.** In mid-July, AI stocks collectively plunged. These tickers lost more than 30% in two weeks. None of the dozen positions could save another; hardware was crashing while software rebounded. His longs lost together, his shorts lost together. He got hit from both sides. Some stocks used call options. Within a 4x leveraged fund, another layer of option leverage was added. When things go well, you're a god; when they go wrong, it's acceleration. The cruelest part of 4x leverage isn't making you lose money; it's not giving you time. - July 24: He wrote a letter to investors. Admitted huge losses, saying this crash was "the best AI bottom-fishing opportunity since early 2025," and tried to ask for more money to fix it. - July 27: Citadel Securities leaked news: The Federal Reserve is about to raise interest rates unexpectedly, accelerating the market decline. - Six days later, on July 30, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase jointly issued margin calls. He was forcibly liquidated of all public stocks. The buyer was Citadel (Citadel Securities), which had previously leaked the news. If these stocks truly rise back later, Citadel profits, not him. He judged correctly, right until the last second. But the right to realize those gains was handed over to others. ## Another story The liquidation of Leopold also prompted many in the crypto circle to discuss another name: SBF. The big fraudster who ruined the FTX fund and was sentenced to 25 years. They started from the same place. In 2022, Leopold worked at the Future Fund of the FTX Foundation, a small team of five people, believing in "effective altruism." And "effective altruism" was exactly the mantra SBF used to preach daily back then. **The persona was the same: a boy genius.** SBF was called "the next Buffett of the crypto market"; Leopold's resume was mentioned earlier. Financing relied on the same thing. Not performance, but conviction. One relied on his mouth, the other on a 165-page magnum opus, both leveraging massive amounts of capital. **The method of collapse was also the same: excessive leverage.** SBF amplified positions using client funds; Leopold went all-in on AI with 4x leverage. Even the speed of collapse was identical. FTX went from hundreds of billions in valuation to bankruptcy in days. Situational Awareness went from peak to liquidation in a month. But SBF committed a crime; he misappropriated client funds, so he went to prison. Leopold did not. He lost his own and his investors' money; the leverage was transparent, and he deceived no one. He just... bet too heavily. One is a criminal; the other is just a young man who applied the wrong leverage to a correct judgment. ## The end of the story What was wiped out was only the publicly traded stocks. His fund did not go to zero. It retained all private equity assets from the primary market (approximately $10 billion), **among which the core asset was a roughly $5 billion private equity stake in Anthropic.** Why wasn't the private equity forcibly liquidated? Because it is illiquid, has no daily pricing, cannot be marked-to-market, and bank margin calls couldn't reach it. **What remained was precisely that asset he couldn't trade, couldn't leverage, and was the most "clunky."** Coincidentally, FTX was also one of the earliest investors in Anthropic. After FTX collapsed, that Anthropic equity stake became the most valuable item in the bankruptcy liquidation, helping to pay off debts. Two margin calls, two geniuses. Leveraged, public, smart positions—all turned to ash. **Only that illiquid, non-callable, slow-moving AI faith survived twice.** Writing this far, I don't know how to describe this feeling. A 24-year-old might have truly seen correctly the biggest event of the next decade. AI will swallow everything, data centers will grow wildly, and the stocks he bet on might indeed rise back, even skyrocket, in a few years. But the market had no intention of rewarding him for being "right." The market only asks one question: When the tide goes out, do you have leverage on your body? The young guy ultimately couldn't beat the old veteran. Not because the old veteran saw more clearly, but because the old veteran lived longer. **In the game of this trading market, survival is more important than being correct.** ### Related Stocks - [LITE.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/LITE.US.md) - [IREN.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/IREN.US.md) - [BRK.A.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BRK.A.US.md) - [ADBE.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/ADBE.US.md) - [07777.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/07777.HK.md) - [OpenAI.NA](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/OpenAI.NA.md) - [NVDA.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDA.US.md) - [00700.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/00700.HK.md) - [BABA.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BABA.US.md) - [AMD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMD.US.md) - [AAPL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AAPL.US.md) - [GOOG.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/GOOG.US.md) - [GOOGL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/GOOGL.US.md) - [WDC.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/WDC.US.md) - [80700.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/80700.HK.md) - [HTCD.SG](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/HTCD.SG.md) - [TCEHY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/TCEHY.US.md) - [TCTZF.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/TCTZF.US.md) - [89988.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/89988.HK.md) - [HBBD.SG](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/HBBD.SG.md) - [GOOGN.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/GOOGN.US.md) - [MU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MU.US.md) - [SNDK.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SNDK.US.md) - [WDCX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/WDCX.US.md) - [02513.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/02513.HK.md) - [09988.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/09988.HK.md) - [AVGO.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AVGO.US.md) - [TSM.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/TSM.US.md) ## Comments (599) - **_7xicwl · 2026-08-02T16:01:06.000Z**: Hahahaha eat vegetables - **ypo1211 · 2026-08-02T15:58:32.000Z**: Buy a little to play around - **Edward0109 · 2026-08-02T15:57:54.000Z**: No one will invest in him anymore. - **Terence_sze · 2026-08-02T15:57:09.000Z**: Bullish on him - **XIE WEN · 2026-08-02T15:55:14.000Z**: Fight to the end - **七条悟 · 2026-08-02T15:53:48.000Z**: Just buy the underlying stock instead. - **港韭 · 2026-08-02T15:53:17.000Z**: All thanks to Citadel Securities' constant holiday rumors, maliciously shorting the AI stock market and picking up bloodied chips along the way. - **心惊肉跳的交易员 · 2026-08-02T15:52:57.000Z**: Let's get hyped. Old man who loves to eat - **volatility equanimity · 2026-08-02T15:50:59.000Z**: The sudden margin call of the Wall Street youth is lamentable. Despite outstanding talent, leverage remains a sword of Damocles. Market conditions are unpredictable; a single extreme fluctuation can swallow all profits. The primary rule of investment: reject leverage, preserve capital, and you can s - **volatility equanimity · 2026-08-02T15:48:53.000Z**: Reject leverage, live with leverage - **新用户_j6ZGq · 2026-08-02T15:46:12.000Z**: 1 - **价值& 投机 · 2026-08-02T15:41:59.000Z**: Yes - **价值& 投机 · 2026-08-02T15:40:47.000Z**: Luck - **魏小花不完 · 2026-08-02T15:38:27.000Z**: Add to position and continue - **顺势而为369 · 2026-08-02T15:36:46.000Z**: Like fish crossing the river, there are many geniuses, but even more who fade away quickly. Evergreen trees are too hard to find. Market opportunities always exist; the key is to survive. - **屑魔女伊蕾娜 · 2026-08-02T15:21:24.000Z**: Leverage can win countless times, but there's always one margin call triggered - **FatHoHo58 · 2026-08-02T15:08:50.000Z**: Position management. Profits won't go up. Profit and risk control are contradictory. - **複數的孤寂不如停息 · 2026-08-02T15:06:16.000Z**: Let Wall Street watch and eat, I'm also 🥲 - **倚伽 · 2026-08-02T15:00:30.000Z**: This genius used high leverage, only to be shorted by Wall Street veterans in a coordinated attack. After being liquidated, the price surged dramatically, finally realizing that leverage is a devil. - **新用户_ZeyML · 2026-08-02T14:57:20.000Z**: Go for it, old man