Goldman's biggest prime-broker client of 2026 was a two-year-old AI fund running four-times leverage

He called the crash a buying chance, then lost the book

Six days before Ken Griffin's Citadel absorbed his fund's entire public-equity book, Leopold Aschenbrenner wrote to investors↗ that July's AI rout offered "some of the most attractive opportunities since early 2025" and invited fresh capital by 1 August 2026 ¹. The capital never came. Margin calls from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Bank of America did, and on 30 July the whole public book went to Citadel ¹.

The invoice for the leverage era just landed

Goldman earned more than $200 million in fees from Situational Awareness this year, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times, more than from any other prime-brokerage client ²³. The fund also ranked among the bank's biggest trading-division clients overall this year, the FT report↗ noted ². A fund founded in 2024 sharing league-table space with Citadel and Millennium is, in Oninvest↗'s summary, virtually unprecedented on Wall Street ⁴. Goldman was one of its main lenders, and the fund remains a client ².

Fees on the way up, a margin call on the way down

The client was built on borrowed money. Situational Awareness launched in 2024 with $225 million in seed capital, ran its public book at roughly four-times leverage and returned 439 percent in the first half of 2026 alone ¹⁵. Assets touched about $45 billion at the start of July, then fell to roughly $10 billion after the forced sale ¹⁶.

Citadel took the roughly $16 billion book at a discount understood to be near 10 percent ⁵⁶. Goldman got paid on the way up, Citadel bought on the way down, and the limited partners met the margin call: the portfolio dropped 67 percent in July, coming "closer to permanent capital impairment than is acceptable to us" ⁷.

JPMorgan walked, Goldman kept the account

JPMorgan ended its lending relationship with the fund after the losses ⁷. Goldman, Citigroup and Bank of America still execute for it, and the fund has added Clear Street as a broker ⁷. The SEC has subpoenaed all four banks↗ over the fund's trades, leverage and communications with lenders; no wrongdoing has been alleged, and the fund says it will cooperate with any request ⁶. Goldman and the fund declined to comment on the fee figure ⁴.

The fee machine is switched off

The fund told investors in July it would no longer borrow to size positions, Oninvest reports↗ ⁴. In September it came back to public markets through options on AMD, Bloom Energy, CoreWeave and SK Hynix, instruments that spend premium instead of owing margin ⁸. Citadel has unwound more than 80 percent of the risk it bought, in over 100 block trades worth more than $4 billion ⁸. An Anthropic stake up 620 percent this year keeps the fund up roughly 80 percent ⁹. Aschenbrenner's own words close the ledger: "not blowing up is task number one and two" ⁹. Watch whether any client ever pays Goldman like this again without borrowed money.