{"text":[[{"start":11.12,"text":"The flagship fund of Ken Griffin’s Citadel gained 5.9 per cent in July after it bought billions of dollars of AI stocks in a fire sale from Leopold Aschenbrenner’s troubled hedge fund Situational Awareness."}],[{"start":25.14,"text":"The US hedge fund giant, which manages more than $71bn, has now seen its Wellington fund surge 12 per cent so far in 2026 after a turbulent July, according to people who have seen the numbers."}],[{"start":38.784,"text":"After a huge rally in AI-related equities earlier in the year, hedge funds were stung by a sharp pullback in July for many popular holdings such as South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix, which tumbled almost 50 per cent from a peak in June. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 briefly veered into correction territory last week, shortly before the deal to sell Situational Awareness’s book."}],[{"start":62.72,"text":"The most prominent casualty was Aschenbrenner’s firm, which notched gains of more than 400 per cent in the first half of the year with its highly leveraged bets on AI companies. But the sell-off badly damaged the fund, pushing it to sell the majority of its public equity positions to Griffin’s firm last week in a quick-fire process that took place over less than 24 hours."}],[{"start":81.84,"text":"Citadel’s own funds had struggled to generate big returns during the first weeks of July amid the sell-off in equities. As of July 24, Wellington was roughly flat month-to-date. In the three days prior to Citadel’s acquisition of Situational Awareness, stocks fell further."}],[{"start":98.444,"text":"Citadel competed with trading firm Jane Street and fellow multi-manager hedge fund giant Millennium for the purchase of Situational Awareness’s equities book last week, eventually winning the auction with about a 10 per cent discount, according to people familiar with the matter."}],[{"start":112.828,"text":"Citadel declined to comment on details of the transaction or the firm’s returns, which were first reported by Bloomberg."}],[{"start":120.23,"text":"Some investors said the bet by Citadel helped to stem a broader market rout because Situational Awareness’s forced selling had been exacerbating the sell-off in AI stocks. Many of Aschenbrenner’s biggest investments — according to his last regulatory filing — including Bloom Energy and Sandisk, rallied the day after the sale. The latter has gained nearly 30 per cent since last Wednesday."}],[{"start":144.72,"text":"“These are names that trade really aggressively,” said one hedge fund manager who had invested in similar positions to those of Situational Awareness. “They were highly volatile, but they were liquid. So Citadel made a killing.”"}],[{"start":157.68,"text":"Griffin is known to charge towards firms that run into trouble. The day Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, Griffin sent more than a dozen of his executives to Houston on a chartered Gulfstream jet to dig into its failure, and later poached several of the company’s top analysts."}],[{"start":175.348,"text":"The hedge fund has also stepped in before to buy the remains of failed competitors. In 2006, Citadel bought the entire trading book of Amaranth Advisors alongside JPMorgan after the fund blew up from bad bets on natural gas. A year later, it pulled off a similar coup by snapping up the credit portfolio of Sowood Capital Management when it collapsed."}],[{"start":198.465,"text":"“It’s classic Ken,” said one former employee, who worked closely with the Citadel founder. “He has played that card many times . . . There are very few [investors] in the world who can do what he did.”"}],[{"start":211.44,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1785978042_3767.mp3"}