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Alternative Market Briefing

Opalesque Roundup: Billions Flow to AI Hedge Funds as Talent Wars Intensify: hedge fund news

Monday, August 18, 2025

AI Revolution Reshapes Finance: Billions Flow to AI Hedge Funds as Talent Wars Intensify

The artificial intelligence transformation of finance accelerated dramatically this week, with multiple developments highlighting AI's growing dominance in alternative investments. Leopold Aschenbrenner, a 23-year-old former OpenAI researcher with no professional investing experience, has raised USD 1.5 billion for his AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness, delivering a remarkable 47% return in the first half of 2025 versus 6% for the S&P 500. The fund is backed by Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and Meta's Daniel Gross.

The talent competition for AI expertise has reached unprecedented levels, with top AI developers reportedly fielding compensation packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Wall Street firms and AI startups are battling over entry-level quants, with Anthropic hosting mixers to lure hedge fund researchers away from finance.

Established hedge funds are integrating AI into their operations, though approaches vary significantly. Seth Klarman's USD 23 billion Baupost Group uses AI as "essentially a capable assistant, a summer intern" for analyzing corporate filings rather than stock selection. Omar Sayed, former Millennium portfolio manager, estimates his new fund Porchester Capital can replicate 75% of a traditional analyst's job using large language models.

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