Citadel's founder this week reprised his role as one of Wall Street's rescue buyers, stepping in to salvage California hedge fund Situational Awareness as it ‌buckled under souring bets on artificial intelligence stocks. By Wednesday morning, Citadel executives had reached out to Situational Awareness, and Griffin spoke directly with Leopold Aschenbrenner, the fund's young founder and a former OpenAI researcher. After a selloff in AI stocks, the Situational Awareness portfolio lost 67% of its value in July, and the fund was forced to unwind most of its $16 billion public equities book. Reuters could not ascertain how much money Citadel had made on the deal, although many AI stocks in the portfolio have risen since. Representatives for Citadel and Situational Awareness declined to comment.