Leopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI researcher who founded the Situational Awareness hedge fund, has expanded his disclosed equity exposure from $5.5 billion at the end of 2025 to $13.67 billion as of March 31, 2026. The portfolio reveals a distinctive thesis: shorting semiconductor companies while aggressively building long positions in Bitcoin miners that own the physical infrastructure needed to power the next phase of the AI boom.

$7.46 Billion in Semiconductor Puts

The fund’s 13F filing shows $7.46 billion worth of put options against major semiconductor companies and chip-related exchange-traded funds. The largest bearish positions include a $2.04 billion put against the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, a $1.57 billion Nvidia (NVDA) put, and more than $1 billion in puts tied to Oracle (ORCL) and Broadcom (AVGO). AMD also appears among the short targets.

The semiconductor short thesis appears to rest on the view that chipmakers face margin compression as power and infrastructure become the binding constraint on AI scaling, rather than chip supply alone. If the bottleneck shifts from silicon to electricity and data center space, the companies that own those physical resources could capture a larger share of value in the AI supply chain.

Bitcoin Miner Positions Scaled Up Aggressively

Quarter-over-quarter changes in share counts show the fund significantly increased its exposure to publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies. CleanSpark holdings rose to 12.28 million shares from 1.64 million, Bitfarms increased to 19.88 million shares from 6.90 million, Riot grew to 11.50 million shares from 6.17 million, Bitdeer increased to 3.44 million shares from 1.79 million, and IREN rose to 11.70 million shares from 8.70 million.

These miners share a common characteristic: they own or lease large quantities of electricity and data center infrastructure originally built for crypto mining. As AI compute demand surges, this infrastructure can potentially be repurposed for GPU clusters and high-performance computing, in some cases at margins higher than traditional mining operations.

Other Notable Long Positions

Beyond Bitcoin miners, the fund also disclosed large positions in Bloom Energy (BE), SanDisk (SNDK), and cloud provider CoreWeave (CRWV). The energy and infrastructure theme runs throughout the portfolio, suggesting Aschenbrenner views physical infrastructure as the primary value capture layer in the AI supply chain.

A Contrarian Bet With Real Risks

The thesis is not without skeptics. Semiconductor stocks have delivered strong returns in recent years driven by genuine AI demand, and shorting Nvidia in particular has been a losing trade for much of the current cycle. The put positions carry time decay risk, and the thesis depends on a structural shift in AI economics that may not materialize on the fund’s timeline.

On the other hand, the portfolio’s growth from $5.5 billion to $13.67 billion in a single quarter suggests the strategy has generated significant returns through the reporting date. The convergence of crypto mining infrastructure and AI compute represents one of the more compelling structural narratives in both industries, even if the timing and magnitude of the shift remain uncertain.

For the crypto mining sector specifically, Aschenbrenner’s growing positions add a notable endorsement from outside the traditional crypto investor base. The fund’s thesis effectively values Bitcoin miners not primarily for their mining output, but for the electricity and physical infrastructure they control — a reframing that could reshape how markets value the sector going forward.

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