{"slug": "leopold-aschenbrenner-s-situational-awareness-bet-big-on-sandisk-and-micron-it", "title": "Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness bet big on SanDisk and Micron before it blew up", "summary": "Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund Situational Awareness held $5.7 billion in SanDisk and $5.6 billion in Micron at the end of June, accounting for 56% of its $20 billion US stock portfolio, before the fund lost 67% in July and sold most assets to Citadel. The fund's direct holdings soared from under $4 billion in March to over $20 billion in June, with increased stakes in SanDisk, Micron, TSMC, and a new $1.2 billion position in Nebius, while cutting option positions from 16 to three.", "body_md": "Leopold Aschenbrenner, the Wall Street wunderkind whose [hedge fund imploded](https://www.businessinsider.com/leopold-aschenbrenner-situational-awareness-wall-street-lesson-ai-stocks-2026-7) in late July, placed huge bets on two AI stocks in the lead-up to the disaster.\n\nAschenbrenner's firm, [Situational Awareness](https://www.businessinsider.com/situational-awareness-keeps-anthropic-stake-portfolio-sale-citadel-2026-7), owned a $5.7 billion stake in SanDisk and a $5.6 billion stake in Micron at the end of June, its quarterly portfolio update revealed on Friday.\n\nIts positions in the [memory-and-storage chipmakers](https://www.businessinsider.com/mu-stock-sndk-memory-stocks-rally-micron-sandisk-retail-traders-2026-5) accounted for 56% of a US stock portfolio worth just over $20 billion, excluding put and call options.\n\nSituational directly owned less than $4 billion of stocks at the end of March, led by a $879 million stake in Bloom Energy. That means the value of its direct holdings soared more than fivefold in the three months ended June 30.\n\n[Aschenbrenner](https://www.businessinsider.com/leopold-aschenbrenner-situational-awareness-open-ai-hedge-fund-2026-7) and his team more than doubled their direct stake in SanDisk to around 2.5 million shares and boosted their direct position in Micron from about 17,000 shares to 4.8 million shares.\n\nThey also ramped up Situational's TSMC stake from around 22,000 American Depositary Shares to 2.6 million, and established a $1.2 billion stake in Nebius at the end of June.\n\nMoreover, [Situational](https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-people-react-situational-awareness-leopold-aschenbrenner-stock-sell-citadel-2026-7) cut its number of option positions from 16 — including puts on the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD, Micron, TSMC, ASML, and Intel — to two small calls and an even smaller put.\n\nIt appears Situational [took on more risk](https://www.businessinsider.com/leopold-aschenbrenner-situational-awareness-warren-buffett-ai-hedge-fund-stocks-2026-8) last quarter, given it sharply concentrated its portfolio on SanDisk and Micron, and cut its number of puts — a popular form of insurance against a stock declining — from 11 to one. Meanwhile, it pared its number of bullish call positions from five to two.\n\nIt is worth emphasizing that these portfolio disclosures, known as 13Fs, only provide snapshots of a single day in a three-month period.\n\nThey also exclude shares sold short, foreign-listed stocks, non-equity assets, and private investments such as Situational's reported stake in Anthropic, so they don't paint a full picture of an investor's strategy.\n\nShares of SanDisk and Micron tanked by 47% and 29%, respectively, in July, as investors took profits after a stellar run and fretted about sky-high valuations.\n\nBoth stocks have regained some ground since then, as investors wager they'll be major beneficiaries of the [AI infrastructure buildout](https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-capex-gdp-housing-market-crash-michael-burry-torsten-slok-2026-8).\n\n[Aschenbrenner](https://www.businessinsider.com/leopold-aschenbrenner-situational-awareness-open-ai-hedge-fund-2026-7), a Columbia valedictorian and former OpenAI researcher, shot to fame after he built a $45 billion AI-focused hedge fund in under two years, and reported a 1,000% gain since inception earlier this year.\n\nSituational's fortunes turned in July when a sell-off in AI stocks meant its highly leveraged portfolio sank by 67%, prompting margin calls from lenders and compelling Aschenbrenner to [sell most](https://www.businessinsider.com/leopold-aschenbrenners-letter-to-investors-after-hedge-fund-meltdown-2026-7) of his publicly traded stocks to billionaire investor Ken Griffin's hedge fund, Citadel.\n\nAschenbrenner didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/leopold-aschenbrenner-s-situational-awareness-bet-big-on-sandisk-and-micron-it", "canonical_source": "https://www.businessinsider.com/situational-awareness-leopold-aschenbrenner-bet-big-sandisk-micron-before-blowup-2026-8", "published_at": "2026-08-17 13:48:21+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-17 14:12:38.285617+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["Leopold Aschenbrenner", "Situational Awareness", "SanDisk", "Micron", "TSMC", "Nebius", "Citadel", "Bloom Energy"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/leopold-aschenbrenner-s-situational-awareness-bet-big-on-sandisk-and-micron-it", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/leopold-aschenbrenner-s-situational-awareness-bet-big-on-sandisk-and-micron-it.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/leopold-aschenbrenner-s-situational-awareness-bet-big-on-sandisk-and-micron-it.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/leopold-aschenbrenner-s-situational-awareness-bet-big-on-sandisk-and-micron-it.jsonld"}}