Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund, which grew from $254.8 million to $45 billion on a bet that power would be the bottleneck for AGI, collapsed this month after a margin call. The entire stock book was sold in one transaction to Citadel. The fund's latest filing showed it had poured $1.38 billion into Bitcoin miners — a quarter of its portfolio.
The power bottleneck thesis
Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher fired in 2024 after raising safety concerns, published an essay series in June 2024 arguing AGI by 2027 was "strikingly plausible." He built a hedge fund around the idea that the real constraint would be power, not chips. By December 2024, the fund's first disclosure showed six holdings worth $254.8 million — all power or chip companies, no crypto.
By July 2026, the fund had ballooned to $45 billion, according to a CNBC report. But its latest 13F filing told a different story: 29 holdings worth $5.52 billion, with $1.38 billion in Bitcoin miners like Core Scientific, IREN, and Applied Digital. Mining holdings had gone from zero to a quarter of the portfolio.
The thesis: miners own power, land, and cooling — making them AI powerhouses.
The margin call and the fire sale
Then the selloff hit. AI stocks like SK Hynix dropped. The fund had also placed losing bets against software firms. A margin call forced liquidation. Citadel bought the entire stock book in one transaction. Millennium Management and Jane Street passed.
No mining company knew about the margin call, the article notes.
Did Citadel engineer the drop?
A theory circulated that Citadel engineered the market drop by predicting a rate hike, then bought the stocks cheap. The article breaks that theory, noting Citadel Securities is separate from Citadel hedge fund and other reasons. So the fire sale was real, not a setup.
The fund is gone. Aschenbrenner's thesis — that power is the bottleneck — now faces its toughest test. Whether the miners he bet on can deliver without his capital is an open question.
