Former OpenAI Researcher Nearly Triples Portfolio Exposure With Bitcoin Miner and AI Infrastructure Bets

Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher who founded hedge fund Situational Awareness in 2024, has dramatically scaled up his bets on Bitcoin miners and AI infrastructure companies, according to a recent 13F filing with the SEC ^[1].

The filing shows Aschenbrenner's disclosed equity exposure grew from $5.5 billion at the end of 2024 to $13.67 billion as of March 31, reflecting a sharp expansion of his portfolio in just one quarter ^[1].

Among his largest disclosed positions are stakes in Bitcoin miners IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, Bitdeer, and Hive Digital ^[1]. These companies have been shifting their identity away from pure-play crypto mining operations toward providers of energy capacity and high-performance computing infrastructure for AI workloads - a pivot that makes their existing power contracts and large facilities attractive to investors chasing AI data center demand ^[1].

Additional significant holdings include Bloom Energy, SanDisk, and cloud provider CoreWeave, reinforcing the view that Aschenbrenner is making a broad, long-term wager on physical AI infrastructure ^[1].

Some analysts have flagged a potential downside to miners pivoting toward AI - a reduced focus on Bitcoin mining could pose longer-term security implications for the Bitcoin network ^[1].