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Aschenbrenner's post-collapse options buys on AMD and Broadcom are a wager that inference demand will absorb the DeepSeek efficiency shock within 90 days.
$2.4 trillion
in market capitalization after DeepSeek's R1 model demonstrated frontier…
22x
forward earnings after a
14%
single-session decline on January 27
17%
over the same window
Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund disclosed options positions in AMD, Broadcom, and Carvana following the sharpest three-day drawdown in AI-linked equities since March 2020. The trades arrived as the Nasdaq 100 shed $2.4 trillion in market capitalization after DeepSeek's R1 model demonstrated frontier performance at a fraction of hyperscaler training costs. Aschenbrenner, formerly of OpenAI and author of the widely-circulated "Situational Awareness" memo on AGI timelines, launched the fund in late 2024 with backing from Sequoia and undisclosed family offices.
The options activity centers on names with direct exposure to data center buildout and inference scaling. AMD trades at 22x forward earnings after a 14% single-session decline on January 27, the day DeepSeek's model went public. Broadcom fell 17% over the same window, erasing $231 billion in enterprise value despite maintaining guidance for custom AI accelerator revenue of $12 billion in fiscal 2025. The Carvana position is an outlier—a pure volatility play on a name trading at 118% implied vol in the January 31 expiry cycle. Aschenbrenner's fund did not disclose strike prices or expiration dates, but the timing suggests March or June cycles given typical institutional horizons.
The thesis here is bifurcation, not capitulation. DeepSeek's efficiency gains do not eliminate demand for compute—they shift the bottleneck from training to inference and from Nvidia's H100 to cheaper silicon running distilled models at scale. AMD's MI300 series and Broadcom's Jericho custom ASICs both benefit if hyperscalers pivot toward distributed inference infrastructure rather than monolithic training clusters. The options structure implies Aschenbrenner expects violent mean reversion within 90 days, not a slow grind. That aligns with his public thesis that AGI capital expenditure will exceed $1 trillion annually by 2027, regardless of per-model efficiency improvements. The Carvana trade is harder to justify on fundamentals—likely a bet that single-name volatility will collapse faster than the index, allowing a profitable unwind on vega compression.
Allocators should track two follow-on signals. First, whether Sequoia or other Aschenbrenner backers file similar positions in the next 13F cycle, due May 15. Coordinated exposure would confirm institutional conviction that the DeepSeek selloff was a liquidity event, not a paradigm shift. Second, watch AMD's data center revenue guidance on the January 28 earnings call. Management has telegraphed $5 billion in MI300 sales for 2025; any cut below $4 billion invalidates the inference-scaling thesis and turns these options into expensive convictions. Broadcom reports March 6, with custom silicon revenue the only line that matters.
The Situational Awareness fund now holds positions in the three names most sensitive to the question allocators will spend the next quarter answering: whether AI capital formation accelerates or fractures. Aschenbrenner is not betting on Nvidia's dominance—he is betting that the infrastructure spend happens regardless of who captures it, and that markets overreacted to a single datapoint on training efficiency. The options expire before the thesis has time to be wrong.
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For the principal
If your manager holds Mag Seven exposure, the Aschenbrenner trades are a live test of whether inference scaling replaces training capex as the AI spend driver.
For the operator
The March-June options window gives you 90 days to validate the inference thesis; watch AMD's January 28 guide and Broadcom's March 6 custom silicon revenue closely.
For the house
Huang Goodman holds no synthetic exposure to AMD or Broadcom; monitoring client interest in March vol as Aschenbrenner's thesis plays out through earnings season.
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