New Delhi, July 31 -- NEW YORK - Leopold Aschenbrenner walked into July with one of the most celebrated records in the hedge fund industry. He exited the month selling most of what he had built to Ken Griffin's Citadel.

Situational Awareness, the artificial intelligence-focused fund Aschenbrenner launched in 2024 at age 23, lost 67 percent of its value during July's AI stock rout, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal. The forced sale of its public equity portfolio to Citadel reduced the fund's assets under management from roughly $20 billion to approximately $10 billion, a level that substantially exceeds what it held at the start of the year but erases months of compounded gains.

Aschenbrenner is 25. He graduated as valedi...