Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Have you heard of Leopold Aschenbrenner?

This is currently one of the hottest names in the AI investment circle —— At just 24 years old, the Situational Awareness LP fund he founded has a publicly disclosed position size of “only” $225 million in Q4 2024, while this figure has skyrocketed to $5.5 billion in the recently announced Q4 2025 position disclosure.

What few know is that Leopold Aschenbrenner was once a part of the crypto world —— he worked in the FTX Future Fund team under FTX until FTX went bankrupt.

A Genius from a Family of Doctors

Leopold Aschenbrenner was born in Germany, with both parents being doctors.

In 2021, 19-year-old Leopold Aschenbrenner graduated from Columbia University with the highest honors, earning dual degrees in Economics and Mathematical Statistics. While at Columbia, Leopold Aschenbrenner co-founded the university's chapter of "Effective Altruism" (EA).

“Effective Altruism” was a principle frequently espoused by FTX founder SBF. Perhaps due to shared beliefs, Leopold Aschenbrenner joined the FTX Future Fund team in February 2022, a charitable initiative created by the FTX Foundation aimed at promoting effective altruism, where he worked until the eve of FTX's collapse in November 2022.

In 2023, after leaving FTX, Leopold Aschenbrenner joined OpenAI, which has since become a leader in AI, entering the Superalignment team co-led by the greats Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, which is dedicated to technological breakthroughs to guide and control AI systems more intelligent than humans.

In April 2023, OpenAI's internal communication system was hacked, but the company did not make this public. Leopold Aschenbrenner promptly submitted a memo to the OpenAI board, arguing that OpenAI's security measures were insufficient. Leopold Aschenbrenner later stated that this memo caused a disagreement between the board and management regarding security issues, and he received a warning from Human Resources.

In April 2024, OpenAI fired Leopold Aschenbrenner under the pretext of alleged information leaks; however, he rebutted that the so-called "leak" actually referred to him sharing a "brainstorming" document with three external researchers solely to seek feedback. OpenAI claimed that the dismissal was unrelated to the security memo submitted by Leopold Aschenbrenner; however, he said that someone had explicitly told him that the memo was the main reason for his dismissal. Just one month later, the Superalignment team was disbanded, and other well-known AI researchers, including Ilya Sutskever, also left OpenAI.

Interestingly, Leopold Aschenbrenner’s conflict with OpenAI is not limited to this incident; his fiancée Avital Balwit is now the chief of staff at OpenAI’s largest competitor, Anthropic… And FTX was one of the early major backers of Anthropic.

Goodbye to the Frontlines of Technology, Entering the Investment Circle

In June 2024, just two months after leaving OpenAI, Leopold Aschenbrenner wrote a 165-page super paper titled "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead." This paper includes multiple chapters predicting the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), envisioning the path from AGI to superintelligence, describing the four major risks facing humanity, outlining how humanity should respond to superintelligence, and articulating the principles of "AGI Realism."

The paper "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" sparked significant discussion in Silicon Valley, and Leopold Aschenbrenner gained considerable fame as a result. In September 2024, Leopold Aschenbrenner founded a fund of the same name, Situational Awareness LP, and serves as the Chief Investment Officer, focusing on investment opportunities in the AI industry chain.

The initial fund size of Situational Awareness LP is not publicly available, but according to reports from mainstream media like WSJ and Fortune in mid-2025, the fund's total assets under management at that time were approximately $1.5 billion, with LPs including Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and renowned investor Daniel Gross.

According to the 13F filings disclosed by Situational Awareness LP (a quarterly disclosure document required by the SEC for funds managing over $100 million), by Q4 2024, the total public holdings of Situational Awareness LP had “only” reached $255 million, whereas in the recently announced Q4 2025 position disclosure on February 16 of this year, that number had skyrocketed to an exaggerated $5.5 billion.

Considering that Situational Awareness LP was founded not long before Q4 2024, the fund likely has some additional dry powder beyond the $255 million public position. Even using the approximate total assets under management of $1.5 billion as a starting point in mid-2025, the public position had already increased to $5.5 billion by Q4 of the same year, which is quite impressive.

Position Analysis: Still Shadows of the Crypto World

Situational Awareness LP disclosed the main 29 positions of the fund in its 13F filing, details of which can be seen in the image below.

As shown in the image, Situational Awareness LP's bets on AI are not concentrated on the application side that is more popular in public discourse, but focus more on the upstream infrastructure industry chain.

• Situational Awareness LP's top ten holdings account for as much as 86%, indicating a highly concentrated strategy, primarily布局 in areas such as energy, computing power, optical communication, and storage.
• The largest position, Bloom Energy, focuses on solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and electrolyzer (SOEC) technology R&D, and due to the growing demand from AI data centers, the company's performance has consistently exceeded expectations, with the stock price up more than tenfold since the end of 2024.
• Hot stocks like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are not found in the holdings, indicating that Situational Awareness LP prefers relatively "less popular" targets.
• The only short position disclosed by Situational Awareness LP is a short position on Indian software services exporter Infosys in the form of options, seemingly betting that the development of Claude Code and Codex will replace traditional IT outsourcing work.

Another clue somewhat related to the crypto world is that the holdings of Situational Awareness LP show shadows of several Bitcoin mining companies, such as Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, Iren (formerly Iris Energy), and Bitdeer, owned by Wu Jihan.

Unfortunately, it appears that Situational Awareness LP is not focused on these companies' direct cryptocurrency-related businesses but is betting on the transition of mining companies towards AI computing power centers —— in an environment where the trends of AI are booming and the crypto market is declining, more and more mining companies are actively seeking change by leveraging their existing resource advantages like land, computing power, and electricity. Here's a preview: we will soon have another article on this trend.

The Fork in Destiny, the Reconstruction of Belief

Looking back at Leopold Aschenbrenner's career, it is hard not to think of another similarly haloed young genius, SBF —— both worked at FTX, both believed in effective altruism, and both contributed remarkable achievements in investment. However, after one wrong step, SBF has now become a prisoner, facing a long prison sentence ahead; on the other hand, Leopold Aschenbrenner's life took a different fork with the overnight collapse of FTX, but fortunately, this seems to be a path more suited for him.

Time does not turn back, and fate never gives people the chance to restart. Some are forever left in the ruins of the old era, while others are forced to leave their original tracks, yet unveil entirely new stories.

As a part of the Crypto industry, what comes to mind is —— the industry is currently at the moment of the greatest wavering confidence since its inception, with some leaving in disappointment, some hesitating and watching, but others actively embracing the new wave of technology and narrative shifts. History often unfolds this way; when old stories collapse, it is often the moment when new stories are born. The reconstruction of belief is another form of opportunity.

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