25-Year-Old AI Stock Guru Faces Losses? Situational Awareness Seeks New Funding, Founder Urges Investors to 'Seize Buying Opportunities'

On July 30, Leopold Aschenbrenner, a 25-year-old Wall Street AI stock guru and former researcher, announced that his AI-themed hedge fund, Situational Awareness, is seeking new capital injections. Following a significant pullback in AI-related stocks, this fund, known for its high concentration bets on the AI supply chain, has experienced notable losses and is looking to replenish its capital through communication with investors and potential asset sales.

Founded in 2024, Situational Awareness's investment logic stems from Aschenbrenner's judgment on the accelerated arrival of AGI. The fund once reached a size of approximately $20 billion, with net returns soaring to 439% by June 2026, making it one of the most watched star funds in the current AI market. Its holdings include companies related to AI infrastructure and computing power chains such as Oracle, AMD, Nebius, and Sharon AI, and it employs leverage to amplify positions.

However, AI trading has recently cooled rapidly, with significant fluctuations in the South Korean KOSPI, NASDAQ 100, and several AI infrastructure stocks, pulling Situational Awareness into the downturn. In recent communications with investors, Aschenbrenner acknowledged the increased market volatility, describing it as a new investment opportunity and encouraging investors to inject new funds before August 1.

This fundraising effort has become a symbolic event following the decline in AI capital expenditure transactions. Over the past year, the market was willing to pay high valuations for computing power, chips, electricity, and cloud infrastructure; however, as tech stocks have retreated, funds are beginning to reassess the return cycles, leverage risks, and crowded positions within the AI supply chain. Situational Awareness continues to bet on the long-term trends of AI, including potential IPOs and other subsequent opportunities, but in the short term, the market's tolerance for high-volatility AI assets has clearly diminished.

Notably, Situational Awareness's previously disclosed 13F filings revealed a significant number of put options. Its first-quarter holdings showed that the fund held put positions on large semiconductor and AI chain targets such as SMH, NVIDIA, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD, TSMC, and Micron, with a substantial nominal exposure. This structure was once interpreted by the market as a relative value trade of "going long on AI infrastructure while hedging against large chip stock pullbacks."

However, the presence of put options does not mean the fund can completely avoid losses. The 13F filings disclose the nominal size of the options corresponding to the underlying assets but do not reveal premiums, strike prices, expiration dates, or Delta, meaning the actual protective strength may be far lower than the surface figures suggest. Additionally, the 13F only provides a snapshot of holdings as of March 31, and by July, when AI stocks had significantly pulled back, the related puts may have been closed, rolled, or reduced, making it impossible for external investors to assess the current hedging status based solely on a quarterly report.

More critically, the fund's previously concentrated long positions were in a batch of high-volatility AI infrastructure stocks. These include Bloom Energy, SanDisk, CoreWeave, IREN, Core Scientific, Applied Digital, Riot, and CleanSpark, all of which are core to AI data centers, electricity, storage, GPU cloud, and mining enterprise transformation. Such stocks are highly resilient during the upcycle of AI capital expenditure, but once the market begins to question AI investment returns, financing conditions, and customer demand, their declines often exceed those of traditional large chip stocks.