Leopold Aschenbrenner Portfolio: 2026 13F Holdings and AI-Chip Puts
Leopold Aschenbrenner spent 2024 publishing a widely-read essay arguing AI superintelligence will arrive between 2027 and 2030. In May 2026 his fund filed a 13F disclosing $8.5 billion in put options against the very companies building it.
The disclosure landed on May 15, 2026 for the quarter ended March 31. The fund is Situational Awareness LP. The bearish positions cluster on NVIDIA, AMD, ASML, Broadcom, TSMC, Micron, Intel, Oracle, plus the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, totaling roughly 62% of the filing’s $13.68 billion reported value.
Key facts at a glance
- Filer: Situational Awareness LP (Leopold Aschenbrenner’s fund)
- Filing date: May 15, 2026
- Reporting period: Q1 2026 (quarter ended March 31, 2026)
- Total 13F value: $13.68 billion
- Information-table entries: 42
- AI-chip put options (nominal): $8.46 billion (~62% of filing)
- Largest put line: VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) at $2.04 billion
- Largest single-name put: NVIDIA at $1.57 billion
- Source: SEC EDGAR Form 13F-HR
Latest public snapshot
The latest public Leopold Aschenbrenner holdings available from SEC Form 13F are the Q1 2026 Situational Awareness LP positions filed on May 15, 2026. They are a delayed public portfolio snapshot for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, not a live view of what the fund owns today.
That distinction matters for anyone searching for Leopold Aschenbrenner’s current portfolio. The filing shows reportable long positions and put-option exposure as of quarter end, but it does not show short sales, intraday changes, cash balances, private investments, or whether the positions were still open after March 31.
| Tracker field | Latest public answer | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Manager | Situational Awareness LP | This is the SEC 13F filer, so it is more precise than treating every line as Leopold Aschenbrenner’s personal portfolio. |
| Filing period | Q1 2026, quarter ended March 31, 2026 | It answers the latest public portfolio question without implying a live position feed. |
| Filing date | May 15, 2026, according to the SEC information table | The filing date is the public disclosure date, not necessarily the trade date. |
| Largest disclosed long equity line | Bloom Energy, with about $879 million of reported 13F value | The long book still leans into power, data-center and AI infrastructure beneficiaries. |
| Largest disclosed put line | VanEck Semiconductor ETF, with about $2.04 billion of reported underlying value | The chip hedge is portfolio-level, not just a single-stock NVIDIA view. |
| Next public checkpoint | Q2 2026 Form 13F, normally due 45 days after quarter-end | This is the cleanest way to update the tracker without relying on social screenshots. |
| Main caveat | 13F data is delayed and partial | It does not show shorts, cash, private positions, leverage, intraday trades, or post-quarter changes. |
Who is Leopold Aschenbrenner
Leopold Aschenbrenner is a former OpenAI researcher who left the company in 2024 and founded Situational Awareness LP, an investment fund anchored to his thesis that artificial general intelligence and downstream “superintelligence” will arrive between 2027 and 2030. His June 2024 essay Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead laid out the case. The fund’s positioning is read by markets as a barometer of how seriously a credentialed AI insider takes the equity-market pricing of AI exposure.
Two things make this 13F unusually informative. First, the fund is small and concentrated, so disclosed positions reflect real conviction rather than indexing. Second, the manager built his public reputation on calling AI progress correctly, so a bearish signal on AI-chip equities specifically (rather than AI demand broadly) carries weight.
Situational Awareness LP 13F holdings: Q1 2026 snapshot
The Q1 2026 Situational Awareness LP 13F holdings are best read as a stress test of the AI infrastructure trade. The filing combines large AI-chip put options with selected long exposure, which makes it a barbell rather than a simple anti-AI bet.
| Search intent | What the May 2026 13F shows | What it does not prove |
|---|---|---|
| Latest holdings | The latest public 13F snapshot is Q1 2026, filed May 15, 2026. | It is not a real-time portfolio tracker. |
| 13F portfolio | The filing reported $13.68 billion of 13F value across 42 information-table entries. | It does not disclose total fund assets, leverage, cash, or non-13F positions. |
| AI-chip puts | Reported put-option exposure was concentrated in SMH, NVDA, ORCL, AVGO, AMD, ASML, TSM, MU, and INTC. | It does not prove the fund was still bearish after quarter end. |
| Current portfolio | The filing is the most recent public regulatory snapshot available for the May 2026 article. | Current holdings require the next filing or a direct fund disclosure. |
What stocks does Leopold Aschenbrenner own?
The latest public filing does not show Leopold Aschenbrenner’s personal holdings. It shows Situational Awareness LP’s disclosed U.S.-listed positions as of March 31, 2026. In that Q1 2026 13F, the largest disclosed long equity lines were Bloom Energy, SanDisk, CoreWeave, IREN, Core Scientific and Applied Digital, according to the SEC information table.
| Disclosed long line | Reported 13F value | Portfolio signal |
|---|---|---|
| Bloom Energy | About $879 million | Power and energy infrastructure exposure |
| SanDisk | About $724 million | Storage and memory infrastructure exposure |
| CoreWeave | About $556 million | Neocloud and AI compute infrastructure exposure |
| IREN | About $401 million | Power-linked data-center and mining infrastructure exposure |
| Core Scientific | About $389 million | Data-center and compute-infrastructure exposure |
| Applied Digital | About $320 million | AI data-center infrastructure exposure |
| Riot Platforms | About $142 million | Power and compute-adjacent infrastructure exposure |
| CleanSpark | About $104 million | Power-sensitive compute infrastructure exposure |
That list should be read beside the options table below. The filing was not simply a long-only infrastructure book. It paired these disclosed long lines with large reported put exposure tied to semiconductors and AI-chip supply-chain names.
What the Q1 2026 13F actually shows
The filing discloses 42 information-table entries. The bearish portion is the put-option overlay. Form 13F reports option holdings in terms of the underlying security count and dollar value, not the option premium paid, the strike, the expiry, or any paired long positions. So the disclosure is best read as evidence of a large bearish or hedging option overlay against parts of the AI-chip complex, not proof of a naked short book.
The put positions:
| Issuer / ETF | Ticker | Reported 13F value | Underlying shares |
|---|---|---|---|
| VanEck Semiconductor ETF | SMH | $2,043M | 5.328M |
| NVIDIA | NVDA | $1,568M | 8.992M |
| Oracle | ORCL | $1,073M | 7.293M |
| Broadcom | AVGO | $1,006M | 3.251M |
| Advanced Micro Devices | AMD | $969M | 4.764M |
| Micron Technology | MU | $584M | 1.728M |
| Taiwan Semiconductor (ADR) | TSM | $535M | 1.583M |
| ASML (ADR) | ASML | $494M | 0.374M |
| Intel | INTC | $159M | 3.605M |
| Corning | GLW | $21M | 0.155M |
| Infosys | INFY | $7M | 0.500M |
Three things stand out about the composition.
The SMH ETF put is the single largest line at $2.04 billion. That is a broad-basket bet, not a stock-picker’s view. The fund is wagering against the entire first-order chip complex, not just a handful of names.
The Oracle position is the only enterprise-software-and-cloud name in the put core, at $1.07 billion. Aschenbrenner does not put against Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Meta. He puts against the one hyperscaler-adjacent company that bet hardest on becoming an AI infrastructure vendor. The implicit claim is that Oracle’s AI cloud story is over-promised.
The Micron line of $584 million is significant on its own. Memory has a cycle independent of accelerator demand, and Micron is the U.S. high-bandwidth-memory supplier. A separate bet on memory specifically suggests the manager thinks HBM pricing enthusiasm has run ahead of the credit cycle reset.
The Q4-to-Q1 evolution: a barbell, not a binary short
The Q4 2025 disclosure for the same fund looked very different. It read like an AI infrastructure long book: Bloom Energy, CoreWeave calls, Intel calls, Lumentum, Core Scientific, IREN, Cipher Mining, SanDisk, EQT. Power. Neoclouds. Storage. The names you would expect from someone who believes AI demand is real and durable.
Q1 2026 keeps that infrastructure long side roughly intact and adds the $8.5 billion bearish chip overlay on top. The pairing matters more than either side alone. The barbell reads as: AI demand keeps compounding, the build-out is real, but equity multiples on the first-order chip winners have run ahead of what 2027 and 2028 capex returns will support.
Read this way, the fund is not betting against artificial intelligence. It is betting that the public-equity market is pricing AI compute too narrowly through the same five or six accelerator names, while the actual second-order beneficiaries (power, grid, data-center infrastructure, networking, memory) are still re-rating.
Latest disclosed trades: what changed from Q4 to Q1
The Q4-to-Q1 comparison is useful, but it should not be read as an exact trade blotter. Form 13F values move because share counts change and market prices change, and the filings do not reveal the day a position was opened or closed. Still, the public comparison shows where the disclosed book shifted.
| Change bucket | Largest disclosed examples | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Largest reported-value increases among continuing long lines | SanDisk rose by about $474 million, CoreWeave by about $119 million, CleanSpark by about $88 million, IREN by about $72 million and Riot Platforms by about $64 million. | The infrastructure side stayed active rather than disappearing under the chip-put headline. |
| Largest disclosed exits from the long book | Lumentum, Cipher Mining, EQT, Coherent and Tower Semiconductor appeared in Q4 2025 but not in the Q1 2026 long-equity table. | The long book rotated. It was not just the same Q4 basket plus puts. |
| New smaller disclosed long lines | T1 Energy, SharonAI, HIVE Digital, small common-stock lines in AMD, TSMC, ASML and Micron, and a small VanEck Semiconductor ETF long line appeared in Q1. | Some new common-stock exposure sat beside larger options exposure, which makes the filing harder to summarize as simply bullish or bearish. |
| Largest new disclosed options overlay | Q1 added large put lines tied to SMH, NVIDIA, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD, Micron, TSMC, ASML and Intel, according to the Q1 2026 SEC information table. | This is the main reason the filing reads like a barbell: long infrastructure, hedged or bearish first-order chip exposure. |
Three industry camps interpreting the signal
Wall Street’s reaction to the filing splits roughly three ways. The disagreement is not whether AI demand is real. The disagreement is whether equity multiples correctly price the risks.
| Camp | Core claim | Where positioned | Key catalyst they watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bull (consensus) | AI demand is real and accelerating; NVDA’s moat is software ecosystem, not silicon; hyperscaler capex compounds. | Long the entire chip complex, long hyperscalers, neutral or short volatility. | Quarterly capex guidance from MSFT / GOOG / META / AMZN. |
| Skeptic (Aschenbrenner) | AI demand is real, but 2027-2028 capex ROI is the gating question. Power, permitting, China access, custom silicon all compress chip margins faster than equity multiples assume. | Long second-order infrastructure (power, grid, neoclouds); short first-order chip names via put options. | Power-permitting backlog, China export-control approvals, custom-silicon ramp. |
| Bear (Burry / Niles / Jensen) | AI demand is real but hyperscaler depreciation accounting hides the true unit economics. GPUs are obsolescing in 2-3 years while books extend useful life to 5-6. A macro slowdown plus capex revision could deliver a 30-50% drawdown. | Short the complex more aggressively, including hyperscalers themselves. | Depreciation-policy disclosures in 10-Qs, macro indicators. |
The consensus camp owns the tape. Hyperscaler capex guidance keeps revising up. NVIDIA’s fiscal-2026 results came in strong. Sovereign-AI deals add new demand. The Deloitte and McKinsey institutional outlooks for 2026 are positive on both semiconductors and data center build-out.
The skeptic camp is intellectually live but not dominant. Aschenbrenner’s put book is the most credentialed expression of it as of May 2026.
The bear camp, anchored by Michael Burry’s depreciation argument and Dan Niles’ macro-revision call, sits at the tail. Markets give it less weight, but its catalyst (a hyperscaler capex revision or a depreciation-policy disclosure shock) is the kind of event that triggers regime changes.
What this means for an AI-overweight portfolio
The wrong reaction to the filing is to mirror the disclosed puts. Three reasons.
First, a 13F is stale by roughly 45 days when it becomes public. By the time markets see the put book, the fund may have rolled, hedged, or closed parts of it. Copying disclosed positions is reading yesterday’s bet.
Second, the 13F shows the bearish side. It does not show paired longs, delta-hedging, short-vol structures, or anything else that might change the net economic exposure. The disclosed nominal is not the same as the disclosed conviction.
Third, shorting high-quality monopoly and oligopoly businesses is expensive and historically wrong over long horizons. Anyone who shorted NVIDIA at any point between 2022 and 2025 ended the period poorer for it. Even if the skeptic camp turns out right, the timing risk on the short side is asymmetric.
The right reaction is to use the signal as a stress test on portfolio construction, not as a trade instruction. Three concrete checks.
Concentration check. What fraction of the portfolio sits in first-order chip names (NVDA, AMD, AVGO, INTC, MU, ASML, TSM, ARM, plus the SOXX and SMH ETFs)? Above 15% of total assets is meaningful exposure to the exact scenario the skeptic camp is pricing. Above 25% is the level at which a 30% drawdown in the basket would deliver a 7-8% household-level hit, which matters even for growth-tolerant mandates.
Single-name check. Any single position above 10% of the portfolio is a prudent-limit breach regardless of camp. The skeptic camp does not have to be right for single-name concentration to cause asymmetric pain. The framework’s single-name flag is independent of the directional debate.
Tax-aware preparation. For households where trim is the right answer if the skeptic camp gains ground, the lead-time blocker is cost-basis data. Pulling tax lots from custodians is cheap insurance that does not commit you to a trade. It just makes the trade implementable when the moment comes.
What the 13F does not tell you
Five things the filing genuinely cannot answer, no matter how carefully you read it.
Net exposure. The 13F discloses long positions plus certain held options. Short equity positions are not disclosed. So a fund running paired pair-trades (long second-order, short first-order) looks identical on disclosure to a fund running an outright directional bet.
Option economics. The 13F reports option value in terms of underlying-security notional. It does not show strike, expiry, premium paid, delta, gamma, or whether the position is part of a spread structure. The disclosed $1.57 billion of NVIDIA puts could be deep out-of-the-money lottery tickets costing single-digit millions, or could be near-the-money positions with very different risk-reward.
Timing of acquisition. The filing is a quarter-end snapshot. Positions could have been opened on the first or last day of the quarter. Aggregate cost basis is not disclosed.
Subsequent activity. Between March 31, 2026 and May 15, 2026, the fund could have rolled, closed, or expanded any of these positions. Forty-five days is a long time in option markets, especially through earnings.
Conviction level. The 13F does not distinguish a sized-for-conviction core position from a risk-managed hedge. A $1 billion put line could be either.
| Source type | What it can show | What it cannot show |
|---|---|---|
| SEC Form 13F | Reportable U.S.-listed long equity positions and certain options positions as of quarter-end. | Total fund performance, shorts, cash, private holdings, leverage, trade timing, fee drag or real-time changes. |
| 13F databases | Faster filtering, historical comparisons, sector views and portfolio tables built from the filing. | A guaranteed real-time view. Parsing and mapping errors can happen, so the SEC filing remains the primary source. |
| Social screenshots | A fast signal that a new filing or position is getting attention. | Primary evidence. Screenshots should be checked against EDGAR before drawing conclusions. |
| Copy-trade or tracker products | A third-party model or product based on public disclosures. | Audited Situational Awareness LP performance or direct access to the fund’s actual current portfolio. |
Leopold Aschenbrenner fund performance: what the 13F cannot show
Searchers often look for Leopold Aschenbrenner fund performance after seeing the size of the 13F. The filing cannot answer that question directly. A Form 13F is a holdings disclosure, not an audited return statement, and the SEC’s own Form 13F guidance explains that institutional managers report certain securities holdings rather than full fund economics.
That means the public filing does not show Situational Awareness LP’s realized return, investor return, fees, cash balance, short book, leverage, private investments, non-U.S. holdings or option Greeks. Third-party portfolio trackers can estimate how a disclosed basket performed after the fact, but that is not the same as the fund’s audited performance.
The safer conclusion is narrower: the 13F shows a public snapshot of disclosed exposure. It can support a portfolio-tracker article, but it cannot prove the fund’s actual P&L.
Leopold Aschenbrenner portfolio tracker: what to watch next
A useful Leopold Aschenbrenner portfolio tracker should start with the next Situational Awareness LP 13F filing. For a Q2 2026 update, investors would compare whether the fund kept, reduced, or expanded the AI-chip put book against SMH, NVIDIA, AMD, ASML, Broadcom, TSMC, Micron, Intel, and Oracle.
The cleanest signals to watch are position direction, option concentration, and whether the fund adds more long exposure to companies that benefit from AI infrastructure but are less directly tied to GPU margins. A reduced put book would weaken the May 2026 bearish signal. A larger or broader put book would strengthen the view that the fund still sees AI-infrastructure equity risk.
The portfolio-tracker caveat is the same as the 13F caveat. A Form 13F is delayed and partial. It is useful for seeing public U.S.-listed holdings and options exposure, but it is not a complete record of Situational Awareness LP’s current portfolio or fund performance.
Frequently asked questions
What did Leopold Aschenbrenner disclose in his May 2026 13F?
Situational Awareness LP disclosed $8.46 billion in AI-chip put options on May 15, 2026, for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. The puts cover NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, ASML, TSMC, Micron, Intel, Oracle, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, plus smaller positions in Corning and Infosys. Total reported 13F value was $13.68 billion, so the bearish chip exposure represents about 62% of the filing.
Is Leopold Aschenbrenner short NVIDIA?
The filing discloses put options on NVIDIA with a reported nominal value of $1.568 billion against 8.992 million underlying shares. A 13F does not disclose short equity positions, only certain option holdings. The puts could be standalone bearish positions, paired hedges against undisclosed longs, or part of a structured trade. The disclosure shows bearish optionality on NVIDIA, not necessarily a directional naked short.
What is the largest position in the May 2026 13F?
The single largest line is a put option on the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (ticker SMH) with a reported value of $2.043 billion. This is a broad-basket bet against the entire first-order chip complex rather than a single-name view.
Why is Oracle in the put book but not other hyperscalers?
The Oracle put is $1.073 billion, the third-largest line in the filing. Microsoft, Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, and Meta are not in the put book. The implicit interpretation is that Aschenbrenner views Oracle’s specific AI-cloud positioning (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a competitive hyperscaler) as over-promised, while accepting the broader hyperscaler capex thesis on the others.
Does this mean Leopold is bearish on AI?
The pairing of a constructive Q4 2025 long book on AI infrastructure (power, neoclouds, fuel cells, uranium) with a Q1 2026 bearish overlay on first-order chip names suggests Aschenbrenner believes AI demand is real and durable, but that public-equity multiples on the chip leaders have run ahead of what 2027-2028 capex returns will support. This is a multiple-compression thesis, not a demand-collapse thesis.
Should I sell my NVIDIA position based on this filing?
No single hedge-fund disclosure should drive an individual trade decision. Three reasons: the 13F is stale by 45 days, the disclosure does not show paired longs that may offset the put book, and shorting high-quality monopoly businesses has been expensive over long horizons. The appropriate response is to check whether your overall AI-chip exposure is consistent with your mandate and time horizon, not to copy a disclosed position.
When is the next Situational Awareness 13F due?
The Q2 2026 13F covering the quarter ended June 30, 2026 is due 45 days after quarter end, so around August 15, 2026. That filing will show whether the put book has been rolled forward, expanded, or closed.
What are Leopold Aschenbrenner’s latest holdings?
The latest public Leopold Aschenbrenner holdings in this article are the Situational Awareness LP Q1 2026 13F positions filed on May 15, 2026. The filing reported $13.68 billion of 13F value and a large cluster of AI-chip put options, led by SMH and NVIDIA.
Is this Leopold Aschenbrenner’s current portfolio?
No. The May 2026 filing is a delayed public 13F snapshot for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. It helps investors understand the fund’s reported public positions at quarter end, but it should not be treated as a live current portfolio.
Where can investors track Situational Awareness LP’s next 13F?
Investors can track the next Situational Awareness LP 13F through the SEC EDGAR company page and compare the new information table with the May 2026 filing. The most important items to compare are the AI-chip put positions, the SMH exposure, NVIDIA exposure, and any new long positions that offset the bearish options book.
What do we know about Leopold Aschenbrenner fund performance?
The 13F does not disclose Situational Awareness LP fund performance or investor returns. It only shows certain reportable U.S. securities and options positions as of the reporting date, so performance, leverage, cash, private investments, and non-U.S. exposures are outside the filing.
Can I track Leopold Aschenbrenner’s portfolio in real time?
No public source gives a complete real-time view of Situational Awareness LP’s portfolio. The cleanest public tracker is the SEC 13F cycle, which is delayed and partial. It can show disclosed U.S.-listed holdings and certain options exposure, but it cannot show real-time trades, shorts, cash, private positions, leverage or full fund performance.
Sources and methodology
- Leopold Aschenbrenner, Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead (June 2024 essay)
- SEC EDGAR, Form 13F-HR filing index, Situational Awareness LP, Q1 2026
- SEC EDGAR, Q1 2026 information table XML
- SEC EDGAR, Q4 2025 information table XML (for the Q4-vs-Q1 evolution)
- SEC, Form 13F FAQ (what 13F does and does not disclose)
- Deloitte, 2026 Global Semiconductor Industry Outlook
- McKinsey, The $7 trillion data center build-out
- NVIDIA, FY2026 financial results
Disclaimer. This article is analytical commentary on a publicly disclosed regulatory filing. It is not investment advice and should not be acted on as a single input to a portfolio decision.
Past positioning by any investor is not a reliable indicator of future returns. An SEC 13F disclosure shows a partial snapshot of a fund’s holdings, is stale by approximately 45 days when public, and does not reveal net short equity positions, option strikes, expiries, or paired hedges. Read it as one signal among many.
