Cliff Asness is a very funny, very smart hedge fund manager whose firm, AQR Capital Management, has some $254 billion in assets. He loaded up on AI-related stock—data center builders like CoreWeave and Nebius; chipmakers like Micron Technology and VanEck Semiconductor—while shorting software companies like Salesforce and Intuit, betting that they would fall. His thesis was that the artificial intelligence models emerging from OpenAI, Anthropic, and the other AI companies would soon obliterate the software and application companies. Rarely has the phrase “hedge fund” been such a misnomer; this was the opposite of a hedge. At its peak, the fund held $45 billion in assets, according to CNBC, an astonishing number given Aschenbrenner’s age and lack of investing experience.