Behind the reporting: The improbable $1.5B AGI bet of a 23-year-old ex–OpenAI researcher

I spent the past few weeks digging into how Leopold Aschenbrenner went from getting fired at OpenAI to managing a $1.5 billion hedge fund — and what his unlikely rise reveals in a bubbly AI world

Sometimes I’ll hear about or read about someone and just have to know more. “Who IS this person?” “How did THIS happen to them?” Or, occasionally — “WTF?”

That’s how it was for a new in-depth profile in Fortune today about Leopold Aschenbrenner, a 23-year-old AI researcher who graduated from Columbia at 19; rose from the ashes of the philanthropic arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange; joined OpenAI’s superalignment team and got fired; and a few months later released Situational Awareness, a 165-page essay that went viral, and also announced a hedge fund seeded by Silicon Valley heavyweights including Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and the Collison brothers. The essay and hedge fund are based on the thesis that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is coming very soon (in a couple of years); that the US must beat China in the AI race; and that vast fortunes awaiting those who move first—more clearly than anyone else. Oh, and that Aschenbrenner was the one who sees all of this more than most.

I was SO curious about this. I had heard of Aschenbrenner when he was at OpenAI, and I recalled when the essay was published, though I didn’t read the full text. I also remember when it went blazingly viral. Even Ivanka Trump shared it on X, lol.

Here’s a gift link if you want to go right to the story. Warning: It’s LONG! But well-worth it, I promise. Or, you could watch this video:

When I started reporting, I thought this might just be another “AI wunderkind” story with some spicy bits. But the deeper I went — talking to former OpenAI colleagues, Effective Altruism insiders, and insiders and investors from Silicon Valley to Wall Street — the more complicated it became. Some people see him as a visionary who spotted the AGI moment early. Others see a talented storyteller selling a conviction in a bubbly AI world. Still others see someone who has sold out on his AI safety bonafides.

But what struck me most is how belief itself has become a form of capital — how people are literally investing in a worldview about where AI is heading. That’s how it is with Aschenbrenner. He is managing $1.5 billion not because he has some kind of finance track record (he has none) but because people are really buying into his vision. According to his friend and former roommate, Anthropic researcher Sholto Douglas, Aschenbrenner is using the hedge fund to garner a credible voice in the financial ecosystem. “He is saying, ‘I have an extremely high conviction [that this is] how the world is going to evolve, and I am literally putting my money where my mouth is,” he told me.

To some, he’s a genius who saw the moment more clearly than anyone else. To others, he’s a Machiavellian figure who repackaged insider safety worries into an investor pitch. Either way, billions are now riding on whether his bet on AGI delivers.

Read the full story here — and message me to let me know what you think. ~ Sharon