Situational Awareness Returns to AI Infrastructure Trades Six Weeks After Near-Collapse

Key Takeaways

• Situational Awareness purchased call options on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Bloom Energy (BE), CoreWeave (CRWV), SK Hynix (SKHY), and SanDisk (SNDK) over a span from late last week into this week.
• The fund's assets fell from a peak above $45 billion to roughly $10 billion in July after borrowed money amplified share price declines and triggered cash demands the fund could not meet.
• Ken Griffin's Citadel purchased the fund's distressed holdings at a discount during the July crisis, while Situational Awareness retained private investments including a stake in Anthropic.
• The SEC subsequently subpoenaed Wall Street banks over their dealings with the fund, though the reported inquiry carried no allegation of wrongdoing.

Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund Situational Awareness has re-entered positions in AI infrastructure stocks through call options, roughly six weeks after leverage-driven losses shrank its assets by about $35 billion. The move revisits the same cluster of companies the fund held before margin calls forced distressed selling in July.

Numbers at a Glance

Peak Fund Assets

Above $45 billion

The level from which Situational Awareness shrank before margin calls in July forced distressed asset sales.

Assets After July Crisis

Roughly $10 billion

The approximate size of the fund following the leverage-driven drawdown, representing a loss of more than $35 billion from peak.

Bloom Energy Friday Gain

Nearly 7%

Bloom Energy's single-day move on Friday, the largest gainer among the stocks named in the new trades.

AMD Friday Gain

Almost 3%

AMD's Friday price move, though the stock also had outstanding put options outnumbering calls at the time, which can reflect hedging by other investors.

How July's Leverage Trap Reshaped the Playbook

The fund's original strategy was built around Aschenbrenner's publicly stated conviction—outlined in a widely read 2024 essay—that artificial intelligence could reach human-level capability by 2027. The fund channeled capital into companies supplying the computing power and electricity that AI systems require. Borrowed money amplified those positions, which worked in rising markets but became destructive when share prices fell. Margin calls arrived faster than the fund could raise cash, forcing sales at depressed prices to buyers like Citadel.

The shift to call options this time around is structurally significant. Unlike leveraged equity positions, call options purchased outright cap losses at the premium paid. That means the fund cannot face the same margin-call spiral that wiped out most of its assets in July. The trade-off is that the contracts carry an expiration date, creating a defined window in which the underlying stocks must move favorably for the options to retain value. If they expire worthless, the entire premium is lost—but nothing beyond that.

The Same Stocks, a Different Risk Profile

The companies targeted in the new trades—AMD, Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, SK Hynix, and SanDisk—are the same ones the fund previously held as outright positions. Each sits in the supply chain that Aschenbrenner's thesis identifies as central to the AI buildout: semiconductor design and manufacturing capacity, power generation, and data center infrastructure.

Friday's price action across the group was uneven. Bloom Energy and AMD gained, while SanDisk and CoreWeave declined. Meanwhile, AMD's put-to-call ratio showed outstanding puts outnumbering calls, though the source notes that such positioning can reflect investors hedging existing long exposure rather than directional bearish bets. The divergence within a single trading session illustrates the volatility embedded in this stock cluster even without leverage.

A notable unknown remains: the source reporting does not clarify whether the capital behind these new trades comes from cash the fund retained after July's crisis or from fresh investor commitments made afterward.

InvestorStack Lens

The structural shift from leveraged equity positions to outright-purchased call options suggests the fund has recalibrated how much ruin risk it will absorb to express the same directional thesis. For observers tracking institutional conviction in AI infrastructure names, the return of this specific buyer—using a bounded-loss instrument—signals that the thesis remains intact even after one of the more dramatic hedge fund drawdowns in recent memory. That said, the source does not disclose option strike prices, expiration dates, or position sizes, so the actual scale and risk of the new trades cannot be assessed from available information.

What Could Challenge This View

AMD's elevated put-open-interest relative to calls could indicate that other large market participants hold a bearish or hedged view on at least one of the fund's core names. More broadly, the July collapse itself is the strongest counterpoint: the same AI infrastructure thesis, held with conviction by an informed insider, destroyed roughly $35 billion in assets within weeks when market conditions shifted. The use of options limits downside to premiums paid, but if the broader AI infrastructure trade loses momentum before the contracts expire, the entire option premium is forfeited with no recovery path.

What to Watch Next

• Whether Situational Awareness discloses the source of capital behind the new trades—retained cash versus fresh investor inflows—which would indicate how much outside confidence the fund has rebuilt.
• SEC inquiry developments: any formal charges or expanded subpoenas related to the banks' dealings with the fund could affect the fund's operating environment.
• Price performance of CoreWeave, AMD, Bloom Energy, SK Hynix, and SanDisk relative to the period when the options were purchased, as expiration dates create a time-bound test of the thesis.
• Whether AMD's put-to-call imbalance shifts or persists, which could clarify whether bearish positioning in that name reflects hedging or directional conviction against the AI infrastructure trade.
• Any regulatory response to the SEC subpoenas or public disclosure of the inquiry's scope, given that the current reporting carries no allegation of wrongdoing.