Nostradamus of AI Leopold Aschenbrenner leaps back into big bets in latest twist after spectacular blow-up

AI investing wunderkind Leopold Aschenbrenner is already placing big bets again, less than a week after his much-watched hedge fund Situational Awareness saw a spectacular blow-up.For those who have followed the “Nostradamus of AI’s” career, that comes as no surprise.The 24-year-old former OpenAI researcher recently made a $400 million investment in a privately held company, Bloomberg reported Thursday.The business was not named.The move came just days after Aschenbrenner was forced to unload most of the public-stock portfolio at his AI-focused hedge fund, Situational Awareness, after a brutal selloff in semiconductor and infrastructure stocks triggered crushing margin calls.But the fund is still in business, has eliminated its leverage and maintains control of an estimated $10 billion in assets, including a multibillion-dollar stake in AI giant Anthropic, according to reports and regulatory filings.And, despite losing about 67% of its portfolio value in July, Situational Awareness remains sharply ahead for the year because of its extraordinary first-half gains.Aschenbrenner’s new bet shows he has no intention of slowing down.Meanwhile, Wall Street has been asking whether Aschenbrenner’s biggest mistake was his bullish bet on artificial intelligence — or simply borrowing too much money to make it.“The scissors of leverage cuts both ways,” Derek Reisfield, co-founder and former chairman of MarketWatch, told The Post.“It’s great while things are going up, as it magnified returns, but it kills you if things go down, especially if you then get margin calls you cannot cover.”Just weeks ago, the young “Nostradamus” — who got the nickname from podcaster Tim Ferriss — looked unstoppable.The brainy German native known for enjoying Rubik’s cubes had graduated from Columbia University at just 19.

An early adherent to Sam Bankman-Fried-style “effective altruism,” Aschenbrenner went on to work briefly for SBF’s FTX Future Fund.The wunderki...