Leopold Aschenbrenner, a 23-year-old former OpenAI researcher with no prior professional investing experience, has amassed more than $1.5 billion for his hedge fund, Situational Awareness, less than a year after launching the vehicle. People familiar with the fund’s performance say it returned 47 percent in the first six months of 2025, making it one of the strongest hedge-fund debuts of the year. Situational Awareness is part of a swelling cohort of hedge funds wagering on artificial-intelligence themes. The Wall Street Journal reports that billions of dollars have flowed to new managers targeting AI-related trades, underscoring investors’ eagerness to gain exposure to the sector’s rapid growth even through untested portfolio managers. The influx of capital on Wall Street mirrors the frenzy in Silicon Valley. CB Insights counts 498 private AI ‘unicorns’ worth a combined $2.7 trillion, with 100 of those companies founded since 2023. Competition for expertise is equally intense: Meta Platforms recently offered an individual AI researcher a compensation package of about $1.5 billion, while Google, Microsoft and OpenAI also escalate pay to secure scarce talent.