Analyzing the 13F Quarterly Holdings Report Reveals the Downfall of the 'AI Stock God'

Original Title: "Today, the World Finally Understands Why the 'AI Stock God' Fell"
Original Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

In the early hours of August 15, Beijing time, Leopold Aschenbrenner's fund, Situational Awareness LP, which was once dubbed the 'AI Stock God' by the market, officially released its 13F quarterly holdings report.

· The so-called 13F is a quarterly disclosure document mandated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for funds with assets under management exceeding $100 million. The SEC requires that funds meeting the disclosure criteria must submit this document within 45 days after the end of each calendar quarter, highlighting their holdings of U.S.-listed stocks, call/put options, convertible bonds, and specific ETF positions as of the end of the previous quarter.

However, just a few weeks ago, Situational Awareness LP had just gone through its darkest moment—due to a significant correction in AI-related stocks combined with high leverage, the fund suffered major losses, forcing it to massively liquidate its public market positions and sell most of its stock portfolio at a discount to Ken Griffin's Citadel.

Although the temporary fall of the 'AI Stock God' has become a fact, this delayed 13F quarterly holdings report still holds significant importance for the market—it presents a complete picture of the fund's static holdings just before its downfall (as of June 30), meaning the market finally has a close-up view of how Situational Awareness LP headed towards massive losses.

In the following sections, Odaily will guide readers through the analysis of Situational Awareness LP's 13F holdings structure for this quarter and interpret the changes in holdings compared to the previous quarter, revealing the true story behind Situational Awareness LP's losses.

Who is the 'AI Stock God'? (Skip if familiar)

In March of this year, we first introduced Leopold Aschenbrenner in the article titled "SBF's Little Brother Turns $225 Million into $5.5 Billion in One Year."

Leopold Aschenbrenner worked at FTX's Future Fund in 2022 and remained with the team until the FTX collapse. In 2024, he wrote a 165-page super paper titled "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" and founded the eponymous fund, Situational Awareness LP, in the same year, serving as its Chief Investment Officer.

Situational Awareness LP focuses on investment opportunities in the AI industry chain. The fund's public holdings in Q4 2024 were still "only" $225 million; however, in the Q4 2025 holdings disclosure released in February this year, this figure skyrocketed to $5.5 billion; by the time of the Q1 holdings disclosure in May this year, it had risen to $13.7 billion... Although these numbers have now lost their significance, the nominal total value of the fund's holdings disclosed in today's Q2 report has reached $20.2 billion.

· It is important to note that in the statistics of the U.S. 13F documents, the market value of options assets is usually displayed as the corresponding underlying stock's "Notional Value," rather than the actual premium cost paid by the fund for the options.

With explosive investment returns, Leopold Aschenbrenner and Situational Awareness LP gained significant fame, becoming one of the most followed AI investment trends online, and Leopold Aschenbrenner was dubbed the 'AI Stock God' by a market eager to create idols.

Q2 Holdings Analysis: $20.2 Billion, Almost All in One Bet

As of June 30, Situational Awareness LP disclosed a total of 26 holdings in its 13F report, with a nominal total value of approximately $20.24 billion. If we further dissect this "pre-crash ledger," it is not difficult to see that the fund had heavily concentrated its positions on the continued explosion of AI infrastructure.

The most striking aspect of the holdings structure is undoubtedly the concentrated bets on SanDisk (SNDK) and Micron (MU)—the former holding approximately $5.674 billion, accounting for 28.0%; the latter approximately $5.574 billion, accounting for 27.5%—together, these two companies accounted for over $11.2 billion, about 55.5% of the entire portfolio.

In other words, just before the fund's collapse, Leopold Aschenbrenner had already placed over half of its public market positions on this single direction of storage chips.

If we continue to break it down, Situational Awareness LP's investment logic becomes even clearer: Bloom Energy held approximately $1.899 billion, betting on the power demand behind AI data centers; TSMC held approximately $1.265 billion, corresponding to advanced processes; Nebius held approximately $1.233 billion, and CoreWeave, Core Scientific, Applied Digital, IREN, etc., further covered AI cloud computing power, data centers, and energy infrastructure...

Therefore, on the surface, although Situational Awareness LP holds more than 20 different stocks (including options), if classified by industry chain, most positions actually point to the same core judgment—that the demand for AI computing power will continue to explode, and the entire industry chain, including chips, storage, computing power, electricity, and data centers, will continue to benefit from it.

This also means that Situational Awareness LP was almost all-in on the continuous explosion of "AI infrastructure construction." In favorable conditions, this combination could indeed achieve far greater upside elasticity than a single stock; but conversely, when AI infrastructure-related assets simultaneously retract, the risks originally dispersed across different companies can quickly resonate.

Especially in the presence of leverage, the combination of "high concentration" and "high leverage" can quickly lead to a liquidity crisis, which is exactly what we witnessed a few weeks ago.

Q1 Was Cautious, Q2 Turned Fully Bullish

Before the release of this quarter's 13F report, I had a question.

In the Q1 holdings report disclosed in May this year, Situational Awareness LP had clearly expressed its high vigilance against the overheating of the short-term market for chips and storage—Situational Awareness LP held put options on leading chip and storage stocks with a nominal value exceeding $8 billion at the end of Q1 (covering SMH, NVDA, ORCL, AVGO, AMD, ASML, etc.), accounting for more than 60% of the fund's nominal total holdings. If it had maintained those positions, the subsequent market downturn should have aligned perfectly with Leopold Aschenbrenner's predictions. Why did it end in such a disastrous outcome?

Only after the new 13F report was released today and I saw the changes in Situational Awareness LP's positions did this question finally get answered—Leopold Aschenbrenner had personally cut the insurance rope he had tied himself to.

In the Q2 holdings report, Situational Awareness LP's "reduction list" is shocking— all put options on chips and storage were completely liquidated. SMH Put (-14.94%), NVDA Bear ETF Put (-11.47%), ORCL Put (-7.84%), AVGO Put (-7.36%), AMD Put (-7.09%), TSM Put (-3.91%), ASML Put (-3.61%)...

These positions, which once constituted the risk bottom line of the portfolio, were entirely abandoned by Situational Awareness LP in Q2. Meanwhile, the MU and SNDK options that existed in the form of call options in Q1 were also liquidated (-3.09%, -2.84%), replaced by direct stock holdings—MU jumped to $5.574 billion as the second-largest holding, while SNDK topped the list at $5.674 billion.

The "increase list" further reveals the flow of funds—besides the two storage stocks mentioned above, TSMC ADR (+6.19%), Nebius (+6.09%, new entry), STMicroelectronics STM (+2.89%, new entry), SharonAI (+2.12%, new entry), Keel Infrastructure (+0.75%, new entry), etc., all entered the portfolio. From European wafer fabs to AI cloud service providers with Russian backgrounds, from power infrastructure to Bitcoin mining companies, Leopold Aschenbrenner completed a complete shift from a "hedged portfolio" to an "unprotected pure long" in Q2.

The cost of this shift became evident at the end of July. When the AI sector faced a systemic sell-off, the put options insurance from Q1 could have partially absorbed the shock, but in Q2, the fund had no short protection left— a portfolio with a scale of over $10 billion, highly concentrated holdings, and a unified direction, under the amplification of leverage, its fragility far exceeded market expectations.

Although the 13F does not disclose leverage multiples, from this "clearing of puts and filling up longs" adjustment record, we can already see the most misguided move of Situational Awareness LP.

Defeat is Inevitable, but the Future is Still Promising

The subsequent story is already familiar to everyone.

Entering July, the AI and storage sectors faced systemic selling, and the positions that Situational Awareness LP had bet on were severely impacted, including the two major holdings, Micron and SanDisk. Based on the closing prices on June 30, as of July 29, rumors of Situational Awareness LP falling into a liquidity crisis began to spread, with Micron (MU) dropping from $115.4 to $73.9, a decline of about 35.9%; SanDisk (SNDK) fell from $227.4 to $101.6, a decline of 55.3%.

Under the amplification of leverage, these declines quickly consumed all of Situational Awareness LP's safety cushion. In the end, the once-glorious achievements of the 'AI Stock God' were picked up at a discount by Ken Griffin.

Fortunately, Leopold Aschenbrenner is still young, and life is long. Most importantly, he still holds a crucial trump card—his portfolio of investments in private companies, including equity in Anthropic. For a 25-year-old investor, the first major defeat in the capital markets may have occurred, but it may not be the end of his investment career.

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