❯ Hedge Fund Situational Awareness Reportedly Sells Anthropic Stake at 20% Discount

FIRE SALEAccording to The Wall Street Journal, AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness is selling part of its roughly $5 billion Anthropic stake at a 20% discount to raise cash, per the report. After the news leaked, the fund was “hunted” in the secondary market. The fund was founded by 25-year-old Leopold Aschenbrenner; according to public reports, its net value fell about 67% in July alone.

CONTEXTPreviously, multiple media outlets reported that before the market opened on July 30, the fund sold its entire public stock portfolio—about $16 billion, including levered positions in SK Hynix and cloud-computing provider CoreWeave—in one block to Citadel, settling a margin call at a roughly 10% discount. At that time it held onto its private assets, especially the Anthropic stake, widely seen as the “crown jewel.” Now even that is being sold piecemeal, showing that cash is still insufficient after the public portfolio was liquidated.

PRICE DISCOVERYThe 20% discount is an awkward number: it shows there are still takers for the primary market’s pricing of Anthropic, but also that the seller’s bargaining power has hit zero. What is truly brought to light is the liquidity of private AI equity—over the past two years, investors assumed these stakes could be transferred at par on secondary platforms at any time; this trade gives the real quote under stress. Other leveraged funds holding large AI private-equity stakes will need to rerun their risk calculations against this discount.

▪ SIGNALThe 20% discount isn’t a price placed on Anthropic; it’s a price placed on “needing to sell in a hurry.”