The AI investing boom gets its posterboy: Meet Leopold Aschenbrenner

Leopold Aschenbrenner begins his monograph Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead with one striking line: “You can see the future first in San Francisco.”

What follows are 165 pages about what the future of AI will look like, drawn with clarity and theoretical forcefulness. The essay went viral and a new Silicon Valley wunderkind was born.

The fresh-faced 23-year-old—who had been fired from OpenAI and who began his career at FTX’s doomed philanthropy arm—was catapulted to new heights: He now runs a hedge fund managing more than $1.5 billion.

It’s a remarkable story in its own right. And as my colleague Sharon Goldman reported in a recent profile of the German-born Aschenbrenner, the story is all the more notable for the ways in which it’s clearly a sign of the times, and the divisive reactions the young AI researcher attracted.

As Goldman writes:

To some, Aschenbrenner is a rare genius who saw the moment—the coming of humanlike artificial general intelligence, China’s accelerating AI race, and the vast fortunes awaiting those who move first—more clearly than anyone else. To others, including several former OpenAI colleagues, he’s a lucky novice with no finance track record, repackaging hype into a hedge fund pitch. 

But why a hedge fund, and not a VC firm (this is Silicon Valley, not Greenwich, Connecticut, after all)? That was my first question, and I’m not the only one. Goldman garnered some insight from an LP who spoke on the condition of anonymity:

“Another investor in Situational Awareness LP, who manages a leading hedge fund, told Fortune that he was struck by Aschenbrenner’s answer when asked why he was starting a hedge fund focused on AI rather than a VC fund, which seemed like the most obvious choice.

“He said that AGI was going to be so impactful to the global economy that the only way to fully capitalize on it was to express investment ideas in the most liquid markets in the world,” he said. “I am a bit stunned by how fast they have come up the learning curve … They are way more sophisticated on AI investing than anyone else I speak to in the public markets.“ 

It’s a story worth reading, not only for its uncommonly interesting central figure—even for AI—but for the ways in which it touches on the intellectual subcultures surrounding tech, from effective altruism to rationalists. Read the whole story here.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com