Jane Street suffered roughly $15 billion of losses in July after its investment in AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness fell sharply alongside positions exposed to the broader technolo
Jane Street suffered roughly $15 billion of losses in July after its investment in AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness fell sharply alongside positions exposed to the broader technology selloff.
The month became Jane Street’s first negative trading-revenue period since 2016 and its worst monthly loss on record. The trading firm has still generated more than $40 billion of revenue this year, already exceeding the $39.6 billion produced across all of 2025.
Jane Street executives linked part of the drawdown to Situational Awareness, the hedge fund run by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner. Jane Street’s stake in the outside fund had risen rapidly during its strong first half before collapsing during July’s AI-stock reversal.
Jane Street initially invested about $2.5 billion in Situational Awareness, an unusual allocation for a firm that primarily trades its own capital. Strong performance pushed the value of that position close to $10 billion earlier this year before July’s losses reduced it to roughly $3 billion to $3.5 billion.
Situational Awareness itself lost about 67% during July after leveraged positions in AI-related companies moved sharply against the fund. Margin calls eventually forced it to unload most of its public-equity portfolio, with Citadel acquiring much of the roughly $16 billion book.
Jane Street also lost money on its own technology exposure and long positions in Asian stocks. AI-linked memory and semiconductor shares were among the hardest hit, while short-duration options hedges provided limited protection because the decline unfolded gradually across the month rather than through a single sharp crash.
The firm has since reduced several positions responsible for July’s losses and become more selective about deploying risk. Its trading revenue has fallen roughly 25% from the peak reached at the end of June, although short-horizon market-making strategies have continued to perform strongly.
The drawdown came as Jane Street was also restructuring its financing. A JPMorgan-led private debt transaction involving about $14.6 billion brought in lenders including Pimco while moving much of Jane Street’s existing public debt into private markets.
Jane Street’s expansion beyond short-duration market making has included investments in private AI companies such as Anthropic and CoreWeave. Jane Street was also among the investors in Anthropic’s $65 billion funding round earlier this year.
The loss also lands while Jane Street remains one of the largest traditional trading firms operating around crypto-linked markets.
Its role as an authorized participant for major spot Bitcoin ETFs previously put the firm at the center of the debate over claims that Jane Street was influencing Bitcoin’s recurring intraday selloffs. Public filings later showed Jane Street reducing its Bitcoin ETF exposure by the equivalent of about 10,800 BTC during the first quarter.
The firm is separately fighting allegations tied directly to crypto trading. Terraform Labs’ wind-down estate claims Jane Street used private information surrounding UST liquidity before the stablecoin collapsed in 2022, with newly unsealed filings focusing on a private Telegram channel and roughly $192 million of UST sales. Jane Street has denied wrongdoing and moved to dismiss the case.
Despite July’s $15 billion setback, Jane Street entered August with more than $40 billion of trading revenue generated so far in 2026.
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