AI prodigy Leopold Aschenbrenner\u2019s wedding weekend brought together a who\u2019s who of Silicon Valley money and influence for a multi-day celebration.<\/p>\n
But there was a big elephant in room: just days before, the 24-year-old\u2019s $45 billion hedge fund, Situational Awareness, had imploded, suffering losses of more than $30 billion<\/a>, and mounting.<\/p>\n Many of the 80 to 100 Silicon Valley heavyweights who turned up for the lavish Carmel-by-the-Sea ceremony<\/a> were investors in Aschenbrenner\u2019s fund.<\/p>\n Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher with no professional investing experience, launched Situational Awareness in 2024 with a few hundred million dollars. YouTube\/Dwarkesh Patel<\/p>\n Avital Balwit is pictured. Her partner\u2019s lavish wedding plans were forced to make a handbrake turn as a $45 billion loss hit. Instagram\/@avital.balwit<\/p>\n Guests had been invited to networking sessions meant to spark conversations about investment ideas and AI trends.<\/p>\n But in what can only be described as peak Bay Area tech culture, these sessions were quietly reworked from bullish market discussions, to sessions about life and philosophy.<\/p>\n Still, the fund\u2019s collapse didn\u2019t derail the festivities.<\/p>\n An aerial view of a beach with homes in Carmel, California. Getty Images<\/p>\n German artificial intelligence researcher, investor, and chief investment officer. Linkedin\/Leopold Aschenbrenner<\/p>\n The wedding went ahead, with attendees sipping Napa Valley wine while a DJ spun a Berghain-style set inspired by Aschenbrenner\u2019s German roots, before calling it a night at just 11 p.m.<\/p>\n Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei reportedly did not attend.<\/p>\n The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like Aschenbrenner went broke and couldn\u2019t pay for the venue or the caterer,\u201d one person familiar with the wedding told Vanity Fair<\/a>.<\/p>\n The tech billionaire struck a deal to offload about $3.5 billion worth of the fund\u2019s private stake in Anthropic to a group of venture capital investors in an effort to avoid a massive margin call, according to The Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then in a last-minute handbrake turn, the deal was scrapped after Ken Griffin\u2019s Citadel agreed to buy the bulk of the fund\u2019s public equity portfolio, giving the firm another source of liquidity.<\/p>\n Leopold Aschenbrenner in a 2021 photograph. Columbia College<\/p>\n Aschenbrenner\u2019s rise has been just as dramatic as his fund\u2019s recent troubles.<\/p>\n The German national graduated as Columbia University\u2019s valedictorian at 19, co-founding an effective altruism club.<\/p>\n Aschenbrenner became a darling of the tech world after publishing his 165-page manifesto, Situational Awareness, in 2024.<\/p>\n He launched a hedge fund with the same name, arguing AI fortunes wouldn\u2019t be made from chatbots, but from the chips, memory, data centers, electricity, cooling and networking that powered them.<\/p>\n Situational Awareness raised $100 million in November 2024, with fees surging more than 1,000% as it attracted a cult-like following, with rivals rushing to copy his trades, according to The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n The 24-year-old AI wunderkind. Leopold Aschenbrenner\/Stanford University<\/p>\n But the blockbuster returns came with blockbuster risk.<\/p>\n