Latest news with #SohnInvestmentConference


Mint
3 days ago
- Business
- Mint
Billions flow to new hedge funds focused on AI-related bets
Leopold Aschenbrenner emerged last year as a precocious artificial-intelligence influencer after publishing a widely read manifesto. Then he decided to try his hand at stock picking. The 23-year-old with no professional investing experience quickly raised more money for a hedge fund than most pedigreed portfolio managers can when they strike out on their own. As valuations of Nvidia, OpenAI and other artificial-intelligence companies continue to soar, so do investments in hedge funds hoping to ride the AI wave. Aschenbrenner's San Francisco-based firm, Situational Awareness, now manages more than $1.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. He has described the firm as a 'brain trust on AI." His strategy involves betting on global stocks that stand to benefit from the development of AI technology, such as semiconductor, infrastructure and power companies, along with investments in a few startups, including Anthropic. He told investors he plans to offset those with smaller short bets on industries that could get left behind. Situational Awareness gained 47% after fees in the first half of the year, one of the people said. In the same period, the S&P 500 gained about 6%, including dividends, while an index of tech hedge funds compiled by research firm PivotalPath gained about 7%. Aschenbrenner, a native of Germany, briefly worked as a researcher at OpenAI before being pushed out. He named Situational Awareness after the 165-page essay he wrote about the promise and risks of artificial superintelligence. He recruited Carl Shulman, another AI intellectual who used to work at Peter Thiel's macro hedge fund, as director of research. The firm's backers include Patrick and John Collison, the billionaire brothers who founded payments company Stripe, as well as Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, whom Mark Zuckerberg recently recruited to help run Meta's AI efforts. Graham Duncan, a well-known investor who organizes the Sohn Investment Conference, is an adviser. 'We're going to have way more situational awareness than any of the people who manage money in New York," Aschenbrenner told podcaster Dwarkesh Patel last year. 'We're definitely going to do great on investing." In another sign of the demand for Aschenbrenner's services, many investors agreed to lock up their money with him for years. Other recent launches include an AI-focused hedge fund from Value Aligned Research Advisors, a Princeton, N.J.-based investment firm founded by former quants Ben Hoskin and David Field. The fund, launched in March, has already amassed about $1 billion in assets, a person familiar with it said. VAR also manages about $2 billion in other AI-focused investment strategies. VAR's investors have included the philanthropic foundation of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, according to regulatory filings reviewed by fund-data tracker Old Well Labs. Veteran hedge-fund firms are entering the fray, too. Last year, Steve Cohen tapped one of his portfolio managers at Point72 Asset Management, Eric Sanchez, to start an AI-focused hedge fund that Cohen planned to stake with $150 million of his own money. Assets at the fund, called Turion—after AI theorist Alan Turing—now exceed $2 billion, people familiar with the matter said. Turion is up about 11% this year through July after it gained about 7% last month, the people said. It is no surprise that thematic funds are springing up to capitalize on the AI frenzy. In years past, hedge funds that specialized in the transition to clean energy and investing with an environmental, social and corporate-governance lens proliferated in response to client demand. Identifying a winning theme isn't the same thing as trading it well. Investors' tastes can be fickle; many prominent ESG hedge funds have either shrunk or gone out of business. The market swoon that followed the January release of an advanced, low-cost language model from Chinese company DeepSeek showed the fragility of the valuations of AI winners, though the market has roared back since then. AI-focused investors argue the long-term trend of development and adoption are inevitable, even if there are bumps along the way. With only so many publicly traded companies that operate in the AI-adjacent economy today, stock picking funds often pile into the same positions as one another and more generalist hedge funds. Vistra, a power producer that supplies the juice to AI data centers, was a top-three U.S. position of both Situational Awareness and VAR Advisors as of March 31, according to their most recent securities filings. Other hedge-fund managers are debuting funds to make investments in privately held AI companies and startups. Gavin Baker's Atreides Management teamed up with Valor Equity Partners to launch a venture-capital fund earlier this year that has raised millions from investors including Oman's sovereign-wealth fund. Each firm separately invested in Elon Musk's xAI. At least one portfolio manager is planning an AI hedge fund as a comeback vehicle. Sean Ma wound down his Hong Kong-based firm, Snow Lake Capital, after it agreed to pay about $2.8 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges last year that the firm participated in stock offerings of companies that it had also bet against. Ma took over an investment firm called M37 Management in Menlo Park, Calif., earlier this year. He is currently fundraising for a hedge fund focused on AI software and hardware.


Time of India
25-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Android is currently optimised for…: Why Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas wants Google to rebuild its operating system
Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas wants Google to rebuild its Android operating system. He noted that Android is more optimised for the tech giant's ad-driven business model than for enabling AI-powered experiences for smartphone users. Srinivas took to the social media platform X (earlier Twitter) to share his opinion that highlights a potential conflict as AI assistants become more common in smartphones. With this post, he questions whether current platforms, particularly those tied to advertising like Android, can evolve into intelligent, agentic systems that will primarily serve users. Srinivas questions whether Android's current priorities are aligned with the emerging era of AI agents , which are designed to interact proactively with users. What Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas said about Android In his X post, Srinivas wrote: 'Android needs to be rebuilt for AI. It's currently optimised for preserving Google's ad business rather than a truly agentic OS.' With this post, he suggests that to achieve significant advancements in AI-first mobile computing, Google may need to make some fundamental changes to the operating system itself, rather than merely adding AI features as layers. This suggestion comes as Perplexity develops Comet, an AI browser that will compete with Google by offering query responses with inline citations. This criticism comes at a time when Google is under increasing pressure on several fronts. According to a recent report by Bloomberg, Apple executives have internally discussed the possibility of acquiring Perplexity AI, with M&A chief Adrian Perica reportedly raising the idea with senior leaders, including services head Eddy Cue. Recently, Srinivas also suggested that Google's key weakness lies in its heavy reliance on high-margin search advertising , which remains far more profitable than its other businesses, like YouTube, cloud services, or AI initiatives. At the recently held Sohn Investment Conference, Srinivas explained how the Android-maker is trapped by its success. He noted, 'This is the first time in two decades that Google is extremely vulnerable.'
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Billionaire investor David Einhorn explains why gold will keep rising — and it's got nothing to do with inflation
"Gold is not about inflation," David Einhorn told CNBC. The billionaire investor says gold is rising on deficit fears. His fund crushed the S&P 500 last quarter thanks to a big bet on gold. David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital crushed last quarter by betting big on gold, and the hedge fund boss said the metal's big rally isn't done yet. Einhorn said that he sees gold continuing to rise even after a record-setting run so far in 2025, but he also said he'd be concerned if the price rose significantly higher. "I'd be really happy if it went to $3,500 or $3,800; I'd be really unhappy if it went to $30,000 or $50,000," the billionaire investor told CNBC on the sidelines of the Sohn Investment Conference in New York. Bullion briefly peaked at $3,500 per ounce in April, a move many have tied to tariff-linked inflation concerns. Gold is historically considered the premier hedge against runaway price growth, which could justify the metal's 22% surge so far this year. But even as prices have eased to a one-month low amid softer inflation data, Einhorn sees gold continuing to rally for other reasons. "Gold is not about inflation. Gold is about the confidence in the fiscal policy and the monetary policy," he said, suggesting that the government has become aggressive on both fronts, altogether contributing to a deficit policymakers are largely ignoring. In his view, gold's appreciation reflects disappointment in the efforts to slim the $1.9 trillion federal budget deficit. Einhorn pointed to the Department of Government Efficiency, an agency that initially promised to slash $2 trillion in federal spending. "A few months have gone by — It's like $150 billion, maybe," Einhorn said. "That's enough to cover next year's defense funding spending increase; that's going to get eaten up really, really fast." The same goes for tariffs, which the administration touted as a massive boost to government revenue. But Einhorn said the new duties appear set to bring in around $100 billion. Fiscal concerns will also continue to grow with the new tax policy, with Trump expected to extend his 2017 tax cuts. The bill unveiled by Congress this week is expected to add trillions to the deficit over 10 years. "We're not really concerned about the deficit. There's a bipartisan agreement to do nothing about the deficit until we actually get to the crisis," Einhorn summarized. If this continues to propel gold higher, that should continue to boost Greenlight's portfolio. The hedge fund beat the S&P 500 with an 8.2% gain in the first quarter, previously noting that gold's 19% advance made it the fund's "biggest winner." However, doubt has risen as to whether the precious metal can keep climbing this year. ING expects gold to average $3,128 per ounce through 2025, citing that some tailwinds are losing momentum. Read the original article on Business Insider Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Billionaire investor David Einhorn explains why gold will keep rising — and it's got nothing to do with inflation
"Gold is not about inflation," David Einhorn told CNBC. The billionaire investor says gold is rising on deficit fears. His fund crushed the S&P 500 last quarter thanks to a big bet on gold. David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital crushed last quarter by betting big on gold, and the hedge fund boss said the metal's big rally isn't done yet. Einhorn said that he sees gold continuing to rise even after a record-setting run so far in 2025, but he also said he'd be concerned if the price rose significantly higher. "I'd be really happy if it went to $3,500 or $3,800; I'd be really unhappy if it went to $30,000 or $50,000," the billionaire investor told CNBC on the sidelines of the Sohn Investment Conference in New York. Bullion briefly peaked at $3,500 per ounce in April, a move many have tied to tariff-linked inflation concerns. Gold is historically considered the premier hedge against runaway price growth, which could justify the metal's 22% surge so far this year. But even as prices have eased to a one-month low amid softer inflation data, Einhorn sees gold continuing to rally for other reasons. "Gold is not about inflation. Gold is about the confidence in the fiscal policy and the monetary policy," he said, suggesting that the government has become aggressive on both fronts, altogether contributing to a deficit policymakers are largely ignoring. In his view, gold's appreciation reflects disappointment in the efforts to slim the $1.9 trillion federal budget deficit. Einhorn pointed to the Department of Government Efficiency, an agency that initially promised to slash $2 trillion in federal spending. "A few months have gone by — It's like $150 billion, maybe," Einhorn said. "That's enough to cover next year's defense funding spending increase; that's going to get eaten up really, really fast." The same goes for tariffs, which the administration touted as a massive boost to government revenue. But Einhorn said the new duties appear set to bring in around $100 billion. Fiscal concerns will also continue to grow with the new tax policy, with Trump expected to extend his 2017 tax cuts. The bill unveiled by Congress this week is expected to add trillions to the deficit over 10 years. "We're not really concerned about the deficit. There's a bipartisan agreement to do nothing about the deficit until we actually get to the crisis," Einhorn summarized. If this continues to propel gold higher, that should continue to boost Greenlight's portfolio. The hedge fund beat the S&P 500 with an 8.2% gain in the first quarter, previously noting that gold's 19% advance made it the fund's "biggest winner." However, doubt has risen as to whether the precious metal can keep climbing this year. ING expects gold to average $3,128 per ounce through 2025, citing that some tailwinds are losing momentum. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Billionaire investor David Einhorn explains why gold will keep rising — and it's got nothing to do with inflation
"Gold is not about inflation," David Einhorn told CNBC. The billionaire investor says gold is rising on deficit fears. His fund crushed the S&P 500 last quarter thanks to a big bet on gold. David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital crushed last quarter by betting big on gold, and the hedge fund boss said the metal's big rally isn't done yet. Einhorn said that he sees gold continuing to rise even after a record-setting run so far in 2025, but he also said he'd be concerned if the price rose significantly higher. "I'd be really happy if it went to $3,500 or $3,800; I'd be really unhappy if it went to $30,000 or $50,000," the billionaire investor told CNBC on the sidelines of the Sohn Investment Conference in New York. Bullion briefly peaked at $3,500 per ounce in April, a move many have tied to tariff-linked inflation concerns. Gold is historically considered the premier hedge against runaway price growth, which could justify the metal's 22% surge so far this year. But even as prices have eased to a one-month low amid softer inflation data, Einhorn sees gold continuing to rally for other reasons. "Gold is not about inflation. Gold is about the confidence in the fiscal policy and the monetary policy," he said, suggesting that the government has become aggressive on both fronts, altogether contributing to a deficit policymakers are largely ignoring. In his view, gold's appreciation reflects disappointment in the efforts to slim the $1.9 trillion federal budget deficit. Einhorn pointed to the Department of Government Efficiency, an agency that initially promised to slash $2 trillion in federal spending. "A few months have gone by — It's like $150 billion, maybe," Einhorn said. "That's enough to cover next year's defense funding spending increase; that's going to get eaten up really, really fast." The same goes for tariffs, which the administration touted as a massive boost to government revenue. But Einhorn said the new duties appear set to bring in around $100 billion. Fiscal concerns will also continue to grow with the new tax policy, with Trump expected to extend his 2017 tax cuts. The bill unveiled by Congress this week is expected to add trillions to the deficit over 10 years. "We're not really concerned about the deficit. There's a bipartisan agreement to do nothing about the deficit until we actually get to the crisis," Einhorn summarized. If this continues to propel gold higher, that should continue to boost Greenlight's portfolio. The hedge fund beat the S&P 500 with an 8.2% gain in the first quarter, previously noting that gold's 19% advance made it the fund's "biggest winner." However, doubt has risen as to whether the precious metal can keep climbing this year. ING expects gold to average $3,128 per ounce through 2025, citing that some tailwinds are losing momentum. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data