Via fool.com
Situational Awareness holds $5B stake in Anthropic, signaling where smart money is actually flowing
Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund bet big on the AI safety company, and the returns have been staggering, raising questions about where capital is heading next.
Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund, Situational Awareness LP, holds a $5 billion stake in Anthropic, according to a report from the Financial Times. The position represents roughly one-fifth of the fund’s total assets under management, which have ballooned to approximately $20 billion since launch.
From OpenAI exile to billion-dollar bets
Aschenbrenner departed OpenAI in April 2024 and promptly did what any self-respecting AI researcher would do: wrote a pivotal essay about AI’s trajectory, then started a hedge fund to put his money where his thesis was.
The fund’s strategy has been unapologetically concentrated. Rather than spreading bets across the AI landscape, Situational Awareness LP went heavy on Anthropic, the Claude-maker founded by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei.
The Anthropic stake was initially acquired when the company was valued at around $60 billion back in February 2025. The company’s Series H funding round, which closed on May 28, 2026, raised $65 billion and pegged Anthropic’s post-money valuation at $965 billion.
Returns that read like a typo
The fund has reportedly generated approximately 270% net returns after fees as of May 2026. Since inception in 2024, total returns have exceeded 1,000%.
Those returns have been driven primarily by the Anthropic position, which has appreciated enormously as the AI company’s valuation climbed from $60 billion to nearly $1 trillion. The fund is now actively seeking additional capital, according to the FT report, and that fundraising effort comes amid recent market corrections in tech and AI sectors.
What this means for crypto investors
Situational Awareness LP has no reported involvement with crypto assets, tokens, or protocols. The fund is squarely focused on traditional financial markets and AI technologies.
Anthropic’s $65 billion Series H round alone represents more capital than the entire venture funding for crypto projects in most recent years. AI continues to attract massive investment even as tech stocks have experienced corrections, with institutional investors justifying near-trillion-dollar valuations for private companies.