Situational Awareness Became Goldman Sachs’s Largest Prime-Brokerage Client Before AI Bets Unraveled

Situational Awareness, the AI-focused hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, became Goldman Sachs’s biggest prime-brokerage client this year before a violent reversal in AI stocks forced a broad unwind of its public-market book. The episode has turned one of Wall Street’s most-watched AI trades into a test case for how leverage, crowded positioning and bank financing can amplify the boom-and-bust dynamics around artificial intelligence infrastructure.