Leopold Aschenbrenner was fired from OpenAI in 2024 over an alleged information leak. Just over a year later, the 25‑year‑old is running one of the most closely watched hedge funds in Silicon Valley.
His fund, Situational Awareness LP, has grown a remarkable 148% in assets under management, reaching $13.6 billion by the end of Q1 2025. That kind of growth doesn't happen by accident, it comes from a very clear and deliberate bet.
The Core Idea: Power Over Algorithms
Most AI investors chase software companies and model developers. Aschenbrenner is doing something different.
Rather than betting primarily on the companies building AI models, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, Situational Awareness is betting that the real bottlenecks in the AI boom will be electricity generation and computing capacity.
It's a thesis that sounds simple but carries enormous weight: the AI race won't be won by the smartest chatbot. It'll be won by whoever controls the power.
Why Bitcoin Miners?
This is where the strategy gets interesting. Aschenbrenner's fund has nearly 20% of its portfolio in Bitcoin miners, but the bet isn't on Bitcoin's price. It's on access to infrastructure and power grids for AI.
His holdings include Core Scientific, Iris Energy, Cipher Mining, Riot Platforms, and Hut 8, all Bitcoin miners that are now pivoting heavily into AI, totalling around $1 billion in investments.
The logic is hard to argue with. After the latest halving squeezed block rewards, large miners started repurposing their high‑density, power‑rich sites as AI hosting hubs, treating megawatts and data center space as scarce assets in the new compute economy.
Big Contracts, Bigger Revenue Potential
The miners Aschenbrenner is backing aren't just pivoting in theory, they're signing deals.
Core Scientific contracted AI cloud provider CoreWeave for 12 years, a deal expected to generate $10 billion in revenue. IREN is targeting over $500 million in annualised revenue from AI cloud services by early 2026. Riot recently shifted gears toward AI and high‑performance computing, signing a 10‑year data centre lease with AMD.
These aren't small moves. These are long‑term structural shifts.
A Portfolio Built Around the AI Era
Beyond miners, the fund holds positions in GPU cloud provider CoreWeave, fuel cell specialist Bloom Energy, Intel, and optics maker Lumentum, all companies sitting at the intersection of energy and compute.
The fund has also taken a short position in Indian IT giant Infosys, a wager that large language models and AI coding tools will pressure the traditional outsourced software services model.
Skin in the Game
According to a spokesperson, Aschenbrenner has invested almost all of his own net worth in the fund, which counts West Coast founders, family offices, institutions, and endowments among its investors.
That kind of personal commitment speaks louder than any press release. He isn't just managing other people's money, he genuinely believes in where the AI economy is headed. And right now, the numbers suggest he might be right.
