Situational Awareness, the hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has returned to a group of high-conviction AI trades after suffering a sharp portfolio decline during July’s technology sell-off, according to a report by GuruFocus.
The fund has been accumulating call options on companies including AMD, Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, SK Hynix and SanDisk, with the purchases involving hundreds of millions of dollars in option premiums.
The new positions mark a return to the AI-focused strategy that delivered substantial gains for Situational Awareness earlier this year, before leverage and a sharp reversal in technology stocks triggered a dramatic drawdown.
The fund recorded a 439% net return between the beginning of 2026 and 30 June, according to an investor letter cited by the Financial Times. That performance briefly placed it among the year’s strongest-performing large hedge funds.
However, the strategy was operating with leverage of around four times, according to the report, leaving the portfolio particularly exposed when AI-related equities reversed course in July.
Situational Awareness subsequently suffered a decline of approximately 67% and was forced to unwind positions in AI-related stocks. Citadel acquired a substantial portion of the fund’s public-equity holdings shortly afterwards.
The latest options activity suggests Aschenbrenner is again targeting areas viewed as critical to the expansion of AI infrastructure, spanning semiconductor processors, cloud computing, memory and electricity.
AMD is competing with Nvidia in the market for processors used in AI computing, while CoreWeave is focused on cloud infrastructure and SK Hynix and SanDisk provide exposure to the memory and storage requirements associated with AI systems. Bloom Energy offers exposure to the power infrastructure supporting growing electricity demand.
The scale of the renewed options activity is notable given the fund’s recent experience with leverage and volatility. Options can provide significant upside exposure while also creating substantial losses when markets move against the underlying positions, particularly when large premiums and concentrated exposures are involved.
