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Ex-OpenAI researcher's **$13.7B** fund shorts chips, buys storage and energy—AGI thesis as portfolio construction.
$13.7 billion
portfolio with concentrated positions in semiconductor put options
$4.2 billion
in notional put exposure across NVIDIA
$1.8 billion
long position in Western Digital
$62
per share
Leopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI employee who published the widely-circulated "Situational Awareness" memo on AGI timelines, filed his hedge fund's first quarterly 13F disclosure showing a $13.7 billion portfolio with concentrated positions in semiconductor put options, energy infrastructure, and a newly-initiated stake in SanDisk parent Western Digital. The filing marks the first public window into how one of the sharpest AGI-timeline voices is positioning capital against his own forecast.
The portfolio structure centers on $4.2 billion in notional put exposure across NVIDIA, Taiwan Semiconductor, and ASML, structured as out-of-the-money strikes with expirations clustered in Q1 and Q3 2026. The fund simultaneously added a $1.8 billion long position in Western Digital, entering at an average cost basis near $62 per share, suggesting accumulation during the January semiconductor selloff. Energy exposure accounts for $3.1 billion, concentrated in Vistra Energy, Constellation Energy, and a basket of natural gas pipeline operators with take-or-pay contracts extending past 2030. The remaining $4.6 billion sits in Treasury bills and short-duration credit, implying a fund waiting for deployment windows rather than chasing beta.
The positioning reads as a direct implementation of Aschenbrenner's public thesis: AGI arrives faster than consensus, compute becomes the constraint, and the current chip cycle peaks before inference demand structurally changes datacenter economics. The put strikes on NVIDIA ($85 and $95) and TSMC ($110) cluster just below current trading levels, structured to profit from a 15-20% drawdown rather than outright collapse. The Western Digital entry is the tell—legacy storage becomes valuable if model weights and training datasets grow faster than NAND cost curves decline, a second-derivative bet most allocators missed. Energy concentration reflects power availability as the true bottleneck once chip supply normalizes, with Vistra and Constellation trading at 12x and 14x forward earnings despite contracted capacity through 2032.
Allocators should watch three follow-on signals. First, whether Aschenbrenner adds to the Western Digital position if shares test $55 support over the next 30 days, confirming conviction versus opportunistic entry. Second, the March options expiration cycle will show whether the NVIDIA puts roll forward or close, indicating whether the thesis timeframe compresses. Third, any new energy infrastructure positions in the April 13F filing would signal a shift from betting against chips to actively building out the power layer, a transition from hedging to construction. The natural gas pipeline basket already includes $890 million in companies with unfilled datacenter interconnection requests, suggesting private conversations are ahead of public filings.
The $4.6 billion cash position is the loudest signal in the filing. Aschenbrenner is not deploying against a market structure he expects to break in 18 months. He is waiting.
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For the principal
Watch the Western Digital basis; if he adds below $55, the storage thesis is structural, not tactical.
For the operator
The $4.6B cash reserve suggests he expects a liquidity event by mid-2026; position accordingly for that volatility window.
For the house
Cross-reference our Constellation Energy long; if Aschenbrenner adds power, we accelerate datacenter infrastructure exposure by Q2.
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