Argos

Situational Awareness is a hedge fund that has just taken a spectacular dive. Its name was adopted from the title of an essay by the fund’s 24-year-old German founder, Leopold Aschenbrenner, exploring the promises and perils of AI ‘superintelligence’. Many people who thought Aschenbrenner himself was super-intelligent gave him money to invest and, for a brief while, he outperformed their wildest expectations, his novice fund clocking up a 439 per cent return in the first half of this year. But in July it plunged from $45 billion to $10 billion as AI-related stocks tumbled and its entire holding of listed shares had to be sold to raise liquid funds. Now market-watchers are asking whether he’s the harbinger of a wider crash or just an overhyped shooting star.