Source: CLS (China Lianhe Securities)
On Monday, Eastern Time, Leopold Aschenbrenner, a highly anticipated Wall Street rising star at only 24 years old, finally released his first-quarter 13F report on US equity portfolio management for his fund, "Situational Awareness LP." ( Related reading: Selling off Nvidia shares and buying fuel cells: The "physical arbitrage" logic of a 24-year-old genius investor )
As we described in our previous report, Leopold Aschenbrenner, the world's youngest head of a mega-fund, foresaw the importance of "logistics" in AI infrastructure as early as 2024, and made significant investments in the power, land, and infrastructure sectors, driving his fund to expand rapidly in less than two years.
The belated report shows that the market value of the fund managed by Leopold Aschenbrenner has jumped from $5.52 billion in the previous quarter to $13.7 billion—less than two years ago, the fund's initial assets under management were only $255 million.
Such a rocket-like surge in assets under management indicates that "situational awareness" funds have become highly sought-after star funds on Wall Street. In fact, in recent quarters, Leopold Aschenbrenner's portfolio adjustments have become the most closely watched "copycat" targets for Wall Street institutions and retail investors.
Let's take a closer look at what this rising star on Wall Street did in the first quarter of this year.
Buying short positions in chip manufacturers
This portfolio adjustment report reveals that Leopold Aschenbrenner's most significant move in the first quarter of this year was to heavily short chip manufacturers.
By the end of the first quarter, the fund had made a significant purchase of put options with a notional value of up to $8.46 billion, covering a wide range of chipmaker stocks, including $2 billion in put options on the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (ticker symbol: SMH) and $1.6 billion in put options on artificial intelligence giant Nvidia.
Buy chip put options across the board
In addition, the fund has established put option positions on Broadcom, Oracle, AMD, Micron Technology, ASML, Intel, Corning Glass, and TSMC.
These put options were not only among the fund's top five purchases in the first quarter, but also among its top five holdings. This undoubtedly highlights Leopold Aschenbrenner's pessimistic outlook on chip stocks.
However, Leopold Aschenbrenner is not entirely bearish on all chip stocks.
In the first quarter of this year, the fund slightly increased its holdings of storage giant SanDisk by 80,000 shares and established a position of $380 million in SanDisk call value options, which may indicate that it expects the storage boom to continue and that its fund is making selective bets on the semiconductor industry.
Still heavily investing in energy and AI infrastructure
As of the end of the first quarter, Bloom Energy (US stock code: BE), a US biofuel company, remained Aschenbrenner's largest bullish bet, with its fund holding 6.5 million shares of Bloom Energy stock, worth $879 million, and 409,000 call options on Bloom Energy, with a notional value of $55 million.
In addition, Situational Awareness has increased its stakes in cryptocurrency mining/data center operators CleanSpark (US stock code: CLSK), Riot Platforms (US stock code: RIOT), Applied Digital (US stock code: APLD), and IREN Limited (US stock code: IREN).
As we previously analyzed, Aschenbrenner's bets on Bitcoin mining companies weren't for cryptocurrency speculation, but rather for the land, electricity, and grid permits these companies already possessed. In the context of the massive expansion of AI infrastructure, these resources are equivalent to "ready-made" AI infrastructure, saving several years of approval time.
A belated 13F report
It is worth noting that Aschenbrenner's 13F filing was originally due to be submitted last Friday—according to regulations, all institutional investment management firms holding more than $100 million in securities must file such a disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission within 45 days of the end of the quarter—but Situational Awarness did not submit its report until Monday morning.
Generally speaking, late or unsubmitted 13F filings may result in civil penalties at the discretion of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with fines ranging from small amounts to up to $750,000.
However, investors' attention will certainly remain focused on Aschenbrenner's specific portfolio adjustments.
Overall, while he significantly increased his semiconductor put option positions in the first quarter, his fund still holds a large number of highly volatile technology stocks and continues to selectively invest in computing, memory, and data center infrastructure. This portfolio adjustment may be worth noting for investors.
