25-Year-Old AI Hedge Fund Prodigy Wiped Out & Jersey Mike’s Goes Public

The 25-year-old AI whiz kid Leopold Aschenbrenner saw his hedge fund, Situational Awareness, go from being up more than 430% through the first half of the year to getting liquidated in a single day — and Ken Griffin's Citadel was there to scoop up the pieces. That story dominated this episode of Morning Brew Daily, alongside Jersey Mike's going public, Apple's Tim Cook signing off, and a GDP report that revealed an economy split between booming AI investment and a consumer showing signs of strain.

The Economy: Two Stories in One

The second-quarter GDP report showed the economy growing at a 1.5% annualized rate — below the first quarter's 2.1% and below expectations. But the headline number masks a deeper split. Business investment surged 8.4%, driven by companies spending on computers, chips, and equipment for the AI buildout. Ernie Tedeschi, chief economist at Stripe, estimated that more than half of all business investment in the quarter went toward AI-related infrastructure.

The catch: many of those chips and components are made outside the U.S., so they count as imports. When imports outweigh exports — as they did because of all this AI spending — trade subtracted more than one percentage point from headline GDP growth.