HedgeCo.Net — Ken Griffin told clients in a Friday letter that Citadel has unwound more than 80% of the aggregate risk from the public-equity book it bought from Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness hedge fund. CNBC, which obtained the letter, said the firm did that through more than 100 block trades with more than $4 billion of market value. 24/7 Wall St., writing from the same Friday update, put the same 80% risk cut, nearly 100 blocks, and more than $4 billion of market value on the tape. That $4 billion is market value traded. It is not a profit print.
The letter is the first time Griffin has confirmed Citadel as the buyer. Discussions to acquire some of Situational Awareness’s holdings began on July 29, he wrote. The next day, CNBC’s David Faber reported that Situational Awareness was forced to sell its public stock positions after steep losses. Citadel later emerged as the buyer. Griffin credited “the trading and prime brokerage teams at the banks serving both firms” for a rapid transfer. Neither CNBC nor 24/7 Wall St. printed a fund-level purchase price in the letter itself.
Griffin also confirmed that Citadel’s flagship multistrategy Wellington fund returned 5.94% in July, which CNBC said was the fund’s best monthly performance since 2022. 24/7 Wall St. carried the same 5.94% July figure from the letter. That is a named-fund monthly return. It is not a statement that the Situational Awareness book produced the month, and it is not year-to-date performance.
The object to mark is an unwind of acquired risk, not a flagship close and not a 13F. Allocators should keep “more than 80%” as Griffin’s language for aggregate risk reduced, keep “more than $4 billion” as block-trade market value, and keep Wellington’s 5.94% as a July P&L print. Do not recast the block tape as a cash-out of Situational Awareness’s LPs, and do not treat the letter as a priced acquisition of the fund.
The second-order read is who can warehouse a forced seller and then de-risk in the open market. Citadel absorbed a public book under a margin-call clock, then sold it in blocks. That is a balance-sheet and trading-infrastructure story. Anyone still marking last month’s AI liquidation as an open Citadel long is a week behind the letter.