AI Hedge Fund Situational Awareness Invests $400M in Chip Startup Source Foundry

Situational Awareness, an AI-centric hedge fund established by ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has allocated $400 million to Source Foundry, a startup created by Stanford researchers focused on accelerating and reducing the costs of chip manufacturing. This latest investment raises the total commitment to Source Foundry to $500 million. Despite recent challenges, including the divestment of most of its public portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel in late July while keeping its shares in Anthropic, the fund's assets under management have reportedly plummeted from $20 billion to $10 billion. Aschenbrenner, who began the fund in 2024 without prior trading experience, has endured significant losses amid a downturn in AI infrastructure stocks. He has, however, proceeded with his wedding. This information was reported by The Wall Street Journal and discussed by TechCrunch on August 9, 2026.