Welcome to Eye on AI, with AI reporter Sharon Goldman. In this edition…the rise of Leopold Aschenbrenner, a 23-year-old AI researcher turned hedge fund manager…the IMF and the Bank of England both warn of the dangers of a financial bubble around AI…and figures that show enterprise AI adoption is growing significantly.
The chorus of warnings about an AI bubble is growing louder. Yesterday, the IMF and the Bank of England became the latest to warn that global markets could face trouble if investor enthusiasm for AI takes a dive.
Yet in Silicon Valley and beyond, that enthusiasm shows no sign of slowing. Investors aren’t just backing companies anymore. They’re betting that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—AI systems as capable as, or more capable than, humans—is right around the corner, with enormous rewards for those who get in early.
It’s an astonishing ascent — one that has many asking not just how this German-born early-career AI researcher pulled it off, but whether the hype surrounding him matches the reality. To some, Aschenbrenner is a rare genius who saw the moment — the coming of humanlike AGI, China’s accelerating AI race, and the vast fortunes awaiting those who move first — more clearly than anyone else. To others, including several former OpenAI colleagues, he’s a lucky novice with no finance track record, repackaging hype into a hedge-fund pitch.
Reporting the story, what struck me most is how belief itself has become a form of capital — how people are literally investing in a worldview about where AI is heading. That belief translates into real money: billions flowing into chips, data centers, and hedge funds built not just on financial models, but on the conviction that AGI is not only inevitable — but imminent.
Whether or not investors like Aschenbrenner are fueling the bubble is beside the point. His rise shows how belief — in AGI, its timing, its inevitability — has become one of the most powerful forces in the AI economy. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are making their own versions of the same bet — that AGI is coming soon, and that belief is worth billions.
Aschenbrenner’s fund is essentially the financial-market expression of that faith — one investor in the fund told Fortune that Leopold said that “AGI was going to be so impactful to the global economy that the only way to fully capitalize on it was to express investment ideas in the most liquid markets in the world.”
I’ll admit, the idea of “expressing” a belief through a hedge fund was new to me as a tech reporter more used to model weights than portfolio weightings. But it did help me make sense of some of the bubbly fizz coursing through the AI world right now — and why so many are starting to worry it could all burst.
