HomeLatest NewsFormer OpenAI Researcher’s Fund Tops $20B After 270% Gain

Former OpenAI Researcher’s Fund Tops $20B After 270% Gain

Posted: 8 June 2026, 18:03 CET 2 min read

Leopold Aschenbrenner, 24, grew hedge fund Situational Awareness to about $20 billion after roughly a 270% gain through May, driven mainly by a private Anthropic stake.

Leopold Aschenbrenner, a 24-year-old former researcher at OpenAI, has grown his hedge fund Situational Awareness to about $20 billion after an approximately 270% return after fees through May 2026. The gain largely reflects a private investment in Anthropic.

Aschenbrenner invested in Anthropic in February 2025 when the company’s private valuation was about $60 billion. By May 2026 a new funding round valued the company near $965 billion, and the Anthropic position now accounts for roughly one-fifth of the fund’s assets.

The fund was built on a 165-page essay Aschenbrenner published in 2024 arguing that advanced AI expansion will be limited more by physical resources — electricity and data-center capacity — than by software alone. Following that thesis, Situational Awareness has favored companies that supply on-site power and rented AI compute.

Public holdings include Bloom Energy, a maker of on-site fuel cells, and CoreWeave, which rents AI cloud computing. The fund also holds several data centers that were previously used for Bitcoin mining and have been converted to run AI workloads.

At the same time, the fund has taken sizable short positions against chipmakers. Positions include more than $1.5 billion betting Nvidia shares will fall and over $2 billion against a basket of other chip stocks.

Situational Awareness is listed among Anthropic’s investors. Anthropic has moved into a confidential initial public offering process. The fund has drawn outside backers including trading firm Jane Street, which helped expand its capacity as Anthropic’s private valuation rose.

The fund’s concentrated positions expose it to specific risks. Potential triggers for losses include reduced corporate AI spending, a smaller-than-expected tightening of power supply, or a reversal in Anthropic’s private valuation. Companies that converted Bitcoin mining facilities to host AI would face similar exposure if demand for compute and power declines.

The reported performance covers the period through May 2026.