Ken Griffin, founder and chief executive of Citadel, told clients in a letter on Friday that the firm had cut most of the risk inherited from the Situational Awareness portfolio. The letter was the first time the firm publicly acknowledged buying assets from that hedge fund. It was obtained by CNBC's Sara Eisen.
The portfolio was heavily exposed to AI investments. According to the letter, Citadel completed the unwind through more than 100 block trades with a combined market value above $4 billion. Griffin also said talks about buying some of the fund's holdings began on July 29.
The next day, CNBC's David Faber reported that Situational Awareness had to liquidate all of its publicly traded equities after severe losses. Afterwards, it became known that Citadel had bought the same assets.
"A transaction of this magnitude could not have been completed without the extraordinary cooperation of the trading and prime brokerage teams at the banks serving both firms," Griffin wrote. "I am grateful for the focused effort they brought to the rapid transfer of the portfolio."
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The fund was heavily concentrated in AI and also held short positions in software companies. Leverage combined with a sudden adverse move can make such a portfolio fragile, and the full sale left Citadel as the buyer of the assets.
The timeline happened quickly: July 29 was when Citadel began purchase discussions, and July 30 was when the forced sale became public. The Friday letter was the first time Griffin confirmed the scale of both the acquisition and the unwinding.
The deal was so large that the banks on both sides of the transaction had to marshal their trading desks and prime-brokerage specialists. Block trades are often arranged off the open market, which can reduce the impact on prices. Selling the full $4 billion directly into public markets could have caused stronger pressure on the AI-related stocks involved.
Portfolios like that can become fragile when leverage meets a sudden adverse move. In this case, the fund sold its entire public equity book rather than trying to hold onto only part of its carefully conceived positions.
Griffin's decision to remove more than 80% of the inherited risk shows how quickly a concentrated AI portfolio can go from one owner to another. The speed of the unwind also signals that the managers were sensitive to the market stress already affecting the AI sector.
For Citadel's investors, the most important takeaway is that the firm identified the risk in the portfolio and moved decisively. The same update confirmed that Wellington returned 5.94% in July, the fund's best monthly performance since 2022. That return, announced alongside the purchase and sale, suggests the broader multi-strategy operation was financially insulated from the damage even while a concentrated AI position was being sharply unwound.
This episode also helps explain how a large, well-capitalized firm can step in when another fund is forced out of positions. The remaining question is whether the AI-related market will stabilize now that the portfolio is no longer in a forced-sale mode.
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