“An eight-person fund used heavy leverage, the market turned, and a bigger firm picked up the pieces.”
Aschenbrenner wrote the essay that told everyone AGI was imminent and trillion-dollar compute clusters were coming. Then he levered up to 400% on that thesis and rode $225 million to $45 billion. Semis went the wrong way, the software shorts went the wrong way, and the prime brokers called. Citadel bought the whole public book at fire-sale prices. He keeps the $5 billion Anthropic stake, so the man who was most right about the hype cycle still lands soft.