Mary in America

The AI Hedge Fund Implosion That Wasn't

Episode Notes

At the end of July, you may have heard the sound of a hedge fund blowing up. Situational Awareness, a fund focused on the new AI world, had a sudden firesale of its holdings. It seemed like an AI bubble barometer—a way to tell whether the markets have gone too far. Amelia Pollard, investment correspondent at the Financial Times, has been breaking stories on the drama every step of the way. And she says this hedge-fund-implosion was weird and distinct from its hedge-fund-implosion peers and precedents in a few revealing ways. One big example: after it crashed, Situational Awareness didn’t go away. In fact, it’s kind of doing well. Have we learned how to bubble better? Or are we just postponing future pain? 

Representatives for Citadel declined to comment.

This episode was fact checked by Francis Carr. 

Further reading: 

How Leopold Aschenbrenner, the ‘golden child’ of the AI trade, was laid low (gift link)