How former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner turned a viral AI prophecy into profit, with a $1.5 billion hedge fund and outsized influence from Silicon Valley to D.C.

Of all the unlikely stories to emerge from the current AI frenzy, few are more striking than that of Leopold Aschenbrenner.

The 23-year-old’s career didn’t exactly start auspiciously: He spent time at the philanthropy arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange before a controversial year at OpenAI, where he was ultimately fired. Then, just two months after being booted out of the most influential company in AI, he penned an AI manifesto that went viral—President Trump’s daughter Ivanka even praised it on social media—and used it as a launching pad for a hedge fund that now manages more than $1.5 billion. That’s modest by hedge-fund standards but remarkable for someone barely out of college. Just four years after graduating from Columbia, Aschenbrenner is holding p