Leopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI researcher dismissed in 2024 over an alleged leak, has dramatically expanded his Situational Awareness fund. A recent SEC filing reveals that the fund’s disclosed equity holdings surged from $5.52 billion to $13.67 billion in the first quarter of 2026. The boldest bets are concentrated in a select group of Bitcoin miners including IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, Bitdeer, and Hive Digital. These positions reflect a conviction that energy infrastructure, not just algorithms, will become the most critical asset in the AI era.
Aschenbrenner’s thesis is straightforward: the bottleneck for AI progress is not semiconductor innovation but access to reliable power and land. Bitcoin miners already possess high-density power sites and grid connections that are scarce and difficult to reproduce quickly. His earlier white paper, “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead,” argued that compute infrastructure would dictate the speed of AGI development more than model breakthroughs. This logic is underpinned by market trends where miners like TeraWulf have seen AI and HPC hosting revenue outpace Bitcoin mining profits for the first time. Core Scientific is similarly converting its Pecos site into a massive 1.5GW AI data center campus, repurposing 300MW of existing mining capacity.
While placing large bets on miners, the fund simultaneously opened $7.46 billion in put options against chip giants. The largest single position is $2.04 billion against the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, followed by $1.57 billion against Nvidia, $1.07 billion against Oracle, and $1.01 billion against Broadcom. This dual strategy is internally consistent: if value accrues to power infrastructure rather than chipmakers, then semiconductor valuations could face pressure even as energy operators thrive. The broader industry shift is accelerating, with companies from Bitdeer to Riot converting mining facilities into AI data centers. Full holdings data is now publicly accessible through regulatory filings, confirming that crypto miners have become the foundation of one of the largest AI-focused investment strategies ever deployed.