Aschenbrenner's Fund Bets on AI Stocks Again After $35 Billion Loss

Situational Awareness, the hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, is returning to aggressive bets on artificial intelligence stocks. According to CNBC, the fund bought options on AMD, CoreWeave, Bloom Energy, SanDisk and SK Hynix stock in late last week and early this week, just weeks after similar leveraged bets triggered a dramatic collapse in its assets.

Recovery after the July crash

Aschenbrenner built Situational Awareness on a simple thesis: artificial intelligence will need chips, data centers, energy and cloud computing power, so it makes sense to buy the companies supplying those resources. The strategy worked through the first half of 2026, when the fund grew more than fourfold and Aschenbrenner became one of the most closely watched investors on Wall Street.

The collapse came in July. The fund's portfolio was heavily concentrated - as of late June, SanDisk and Micron Technology together accounted for more than half of its disclosed US equity holdings. When semiconductor stocks began to fall, the leveraged positions triggered margin calls, forcing the fund to sell.

Sold off to Citadel

Most of the fund's public equity positions ended up at Ken Griffin's Citadel as part of the forced liquidation. Situational Awareness's assets fell from nearly $45 billion to about $10 billion within a few weeks. The fund's private holdings, including its stake in Anthropic, came through the selloff untouched, since they weren't subject to the same margin mechanics as its public positions.

The losses hit at a particularly awkward personal moment, just days before Aschenbrenner's wedding to Avital Balwit, chief of staff at Anthropic. The couple had to cancel their honeymoon because of the fund's financial situation.

New bets

According to CNBC, the fund hasn't disclosed whether it used fresh capital from investors for the new options purchases or money left over after the July selloff and the sale of positions to Citadel. What's clear is that Aschenbrenner is returning to the same strategy, betting once again on AI infrastructure companies: memory, chips and data-center-linked firms.

In August 2026 the fund also invested $400 million in Source Foundry, a private company co-founded by the Collison brothers (of Stripe), former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. The move shows that despite its public losses, the fund still has capital for large bets outside the public markets.

What this means for the market

The Situational Awareness saga illustrates just how volatile valuations tied to the AI boom can be - the same memory and chip stocks that drove the fund's returns up by hundreds of percent in the first half of the year stripped away three-quarters of its assets within a single month. The return to similar bets, this time through options rather than direct, heavily leveraged equity positions, suggests Aschenbrenner still believes in the same investment thesis, even as he chooses his tools more cautiously.

For Polish investors and funds tracking the AI market, the Situational Awareness episode is a reminder that AI infrastructure companies - memory and chip makers and data center operators - remain among the most volatile assets on the market, regardless of how strong the long-term demand forecasts for computing power may be.