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Welcome back. After the recent AI-stock sell-off, Leopold Aschenbrenner's $20bn fund is seeking fresh capital. We're diving into it today alongside a stacked lineup featuring a 27 year old building Europe's answer to Palantir and the former Beats Music CEO now at the forefront of digital asset security. Live 12–3 BST. Here's your Order of Play.
What else is happening
Even the AI boom's standout winners are under pressure as stocks slide this week.
Leopold Aschenbrenner's $20bn Situational Awareness fund, launched by the former OpenAI researcher back in 2024, is quietly on the hunt for fresh capital after taking heavy losses in the recent rout.
It's a sharp turn for a fund that looked untouchable just weeks ago. Situational Awareness was up a staggering 439% on the year to the end of June.
But Aschenbrenner isn't flinching, at least not on paper. In a 24 July letter to investors, he admitted the fund had "not been immune" to the sell-off, then framed the drop as the best buying opportunity since early 2025, pointing to an expected Anthropic IPO as one catalyst for the rebound he's betting on.
Whether investors share his conviction or read the raise as a warning sign, it's a story worth keeping an eye on.
We're getting into all of it on today's show at 12 BST.
Yesterday's moment
Not every great product starts with a roadmap.
Granola co-founder Sam Stephenson told us the company's Apple Watch app started with one engineer going off-script. "It took one of our iOS engineers to go rogue a little bit and build a hacky first version."
The team gave it a try and the penny dropped fast: "We all started playing with it and woke up thinking, ‘This is kind of a big deal.'" A week or two of using it internally, and they were sold.
Watch the full interview here.
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Luke & Ronan
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