Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former researcher at OpenAI who worked on AI alignment and safety, has revealed a massive investment shift that positions Bitcoin miners at the center of the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout. According to a 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accepted on May 18, 2026, his fund Situational Awareness LP grew its disclosed equity exposure from $5.5 billion to $13.67 billion in the first quarter of 2026.
The core of his strategy is a concentrated bet on companies that already control the physical resources AI needs most: energy and land. His largest long positions are in Bitcoin mining firms—IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, Bitdeer, and Hive Digital—alongside Bloom Energy, SanDisk, and cloud provider CoreWeave. These miners own enormous power infrastructure, secured energy contracts, and large-scale data center facilities that can be repurposed for high-performance computing and AI workloads.
While going long on miners, Aschenbrenner simultaneously opened $7.46 billion in put options against semiconductor giants. The filings show a $2.04 billion put on the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, a $1.57 billion put on Nvidia, $1.07 billion on Oracle, and $1.01 billion on Broadcom. This paired trade—long the infrastructure owners, short the chip makers—reflects his thesis that the AI boom’s value will eventually flow to those who provide power and real estate, not just silicon.
The transition is already underway. Core Scientific has announced plans to convert its Pecos site into a 1.5-gigawatt AI data center campus, reallocating 300 megawatts from Bitcoin mining. TeraWulf reported that its AI and high-performance computing revenue surpassed its Bitcoin mining revenue for the first time in Q1 2026. In a 165-page paper titled “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead,” Aschenbrenner argued that compute infrastructure, not model development, will dictate the path toward artificial general intelligence.
His investment moves provide a rare, data-backed window into how a former OpenAI insider is capitalizing on the convergence of crypto mining infrastructure and AI, and they underscore a broader market trend: the physical layer of the AI revolution is creating investment opportunities beyond the usual chipmakers.
