According to the Q1 2026 13F filing accepted by the SEC on May 18, Situational Awareness fund managed by ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner has more than doubled its equity exposure from $5.52 billion at end-2025 to $13.67 billion as of March 31. The fund's total assets under management reached $13.67 billion by March 31, with Bitcoin miners serving as the primary long positions. As reported by Fortune, Aschenbrenner's thesis centers on the idea that "the most valuable assets in the AI era may not be algorithms, but electricity and computing power." Aschenbrenner, who was fired from OpenAI in 2024 over an alleged information leak, filed the fund's Q1 2026 13F with the SEC on May 15, with the regulator accepting it on May 18.
The fund's largest long positions span Bitcoin miners including IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, Bitdeer, and Hive Digital, alongside energy and compute plays such as Bloom Energy, SanDisk, and CoreWeave. According to the 13F filing, these holdings represent Aschenbrenner's belief that AI buildout will be bottlenecked by power and land access rather than chip availability. The investment logic positions Bitcoin miners as having already secured high-density power sites and grid access that AI companies cannot replicate quickly. As reported by Fortune, Aschenbrenner's 165-page "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" paper argued that compute infrastructure, not model development, would determine the pace of AGI progress.
Simultaneously, the fund opened $8.45 billion in put options against the semiconductor sector, with the largest positions totaling $2.04 billion against the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, $1.57 billion against Nvidia, $1.07 billion against Oracle, and $1.01 billion against Broadcom. The fund has also expanded its short positions to include AMD, Micron, TSM, ASML, and Intel, as reported by wealthonmars on May 18, 2026. This pairing creates internal consistency with the miner thesis: if AI value accrues to power sites rather than chip makers, semiconductor valuations face compression even as infrastructure operators gain. The trend is already reshaping reported earnings, with companies like TeraWulf reporting $21 million in AI and HPC hosting revenue outpacing Bitcoin mining revenue for the first time in Q1 2026.
The investment thesis is gaining practical validation as companies in Aschenbrenner's portfolio announce major AI infrastructure expansions. Core Scientific, among Aschenbrenner's disclosed holdings, has announced plans to repurpose its Pecos site into a 1.5GW AI data center campus, repurposing 300MW of existing mining capacity. This development demonstrates the real-world application of Aschenbrenner's thesis that AI buildout will be bottlenecked by power and land access rather than chip availability. The fund's strategy positions it to benefit from the infrastructure transformation as AI companies increasingly compete for high-density power sites and grid access that Bitcoin miners have already secured.
