Leopold Aschenbrenner
Situational Awareness
Profile & Investment Philosophy
Leopold Aschenbrenner is a German-American former OpenAI Superalignment researcher who, in his late twenties, became one of the most talked-about hedge-fund managers in the world. His Situational Awareness LP scaled from roughly $225 million at its 2024 launch to more than $20 billion by 2026 on a single thesis: that artificial general intelligence will reshape the economy and is best expressed in the most liquid public markets. His Q1 2026 SEC 13F reveals a striking barbell — more than $8 billion of put options against richly valued chipmakers, set against concentrated long bets on the physical AI build-out such as Bloom Energy, SanDisk and CoreWeave.
Track Record
Aschenbrenner graduated as valedictorian from Columbia University at 19, worked at Oxford-linked research institutes, then joined OpenAI's Superalignment team in 2023 before his dismissal in April 2024 amid disputes over safety and security. His 165-page essay “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead” argued that AGI could arrive by 2027. He launched Situational Awareness LP that same year with anchor capital from Stripe's Patrick and John Collison, Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman. The fund reportedly returned 47% after fees in the first half of 2025, surged again in 2026, and later attracted trading giant Jane Street as an investor.
Signature Trades
Current Strategy (2026)
Aschenbrenner's Q1 2026 13F reads as a barbell on the AI trade. On one side sits a roughly $8.4 billion book of put options against premium-priced chipmakers (Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, Micron, TSMC, ASML and the SMH ETF) — a hedge, or outright bet, that semiconductor valuations have overshot. On the other are concentrated longs in the “picks and shovels” of compute: power generation (Bloom Energy), storage (SanDisk), neoclouds (CoreWeave) and miners-turned-data-centers (IREN, Core Scientific, Applied Digital, Riot, CleanSpark). The message: stay long the AI build-out, short its most crowded valuations.
BMI Counter-Take
Aschenbrenner's rise is extraordinary — and so is the concentration risk. Running more than $20 billion before turning 30 on a single macro thesis, with the majority of his reported 13F value tied up in put options, is a timing bet as much as a research call: options decay, and a melt-up in the very chip names he is short could hurt quickly. The long book is logical — power and compute are genuine bottlenecks — yet richly valued in its own right. We respect the conviction and the SEC-documented record, but we treat a portfolio this skewed, this young and this dependent on AGI arriving on schedule as a high-variance bet, not a blueprint to copy.
Current Portfolio
LATEST 13F 2026-03-31Latest SEC Form 13F filing. Total portfolio value: $13.7 B. Holdings: 42 positions.
| Security | Type | Shares | Δ vs Prev | Value ($) | Portfolio % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vaneck Semiconductor ETF | Put | 5.33 M | ★ NEW | $2.04 B | 14.9 % |
| Nvidia | Put | 8.99 M | ★ NEW | $1.57 B | 11.5 % |
| Oracle | Put | 7.29 M | ★ NEW | $1.07 B | 7.84 % |
| Broadcom | Put | 3.25 M | ★ NEW | $1.01 B | 7.36 % |
| Advanced Micro Devices | Put | 4.76 M | ★ NEW | $969 M | 7.09 % |
| Bloom Energy | Common | 6.49 M | -35.6% | $879 M | 6.42 % |
| Sandisk | Common | 1.14 M | +8.2% | $724 M | 5.30 % |
| Micron Technology | Put | 1.73 M | ★ NEW | $584 M | 4.27 % |
| Coreweave | Common | 7.18 M | +17.7% | $556 M | 4.07 % |
| Taiwan Semiconductor | Put | 1.58 M | ★ NEW | $535 M | 3.91 % |
SOURCE: SEC Form 13F (2026-05-18). BMI Smart Money Tracker.