Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
Have you heard of Leopold Aschenbrenner?
He is one of the hottest names in the current AI investment circle — At just 24 years old, his Situational Awareness LP fund had a public holdings size of only $225 million in Q4 2024, but in the Q4 2025 disclosure announced last month, this number skyrocketed to $5.5 billion.
What few people know is that Leopold Aschenbrenner was once part of the crypto world — he previously worked for FTX’s FTX Future Fund team until FTX’s bankruptcy and collapse.
A Doctor’s Family Produces an AI Genius
Leopold Aschenbrenner was born in Germany to a family of doctors.
In 2021, at age 19, Leopold Aschenbrenner graduated from Columbia University as the top student, earning dual degrees in Economics and Mathematical Statistics. During his time at Columbia, Leopold Aschenbrenner co-founded the university’s Effective Altruism (EA) chapter.
“Effective Altruism” was a core principle often cited by FTX founder SBF. Possibly due to shared ideals, Leopold Aschenbrenner joined the FTX Future Fund team in February 2022, a charitable initiative created by the FTX Foundation to promote effective altruism. He worked there until just before FTX’s collapse in November 2022.
In 2023, after leaving FTX, Leopold Aschenbrenner joined OpenAI, now a leading AI company, working in the Superalignment team led by the renowned Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike. The team focuses on technological breakthroughs to guide and control superintelligent AI systems.
In April 2023, OpenAI’s internal communication system was hacked, though the company did not publicly disclose this. Leopold Aschenbrenner then submitted a memo to the OpenAI board criticizing the company’s security measures. He later stated that this memo caused disagreements between the board and management over security issues, and he received a warning from HR.
In April 2024, OpenAI dismissed Leopold Aschenbrenner on suspicion of information leaks, but he countered that the so-called “leak” was simply sharing a “brainstorming” document with three external researchers for feedback. OpenAI claimed his dismissal was unrelated to the memo, but Leopold Aschenbrenner said he was explicitly told that the memo was the main reason for his firing. Just a month later, the Superalignment team disbanded, and other prominent AI researchers, including Ilya Sutskever, left OpenAI.
Interestingly, Leopold Aschenbrenner’s conflict with OpenAI isn’t the only one — his fiancée, Avital Balwit, is now the chief of staff at Anthropic, a major competitor of OpenAI… and FTX was also an early major investor in Anthropic.
Leaving the Tech Frontline, Entering the Investment World
In June 2024, just two months after leaving OpenAI, Leopold Aschenbrenner published a 165-page super paper titled “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead.” The paper predicts the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), envisions pathways from AGI to superintelligence, discusses four major risks facing humanity, outlines strategies to address superintelligence, and presents principles of “AGI realism.”
“Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead” sparked huge discussions in Silicon Valley, greatly boosting Leopold Aschenbrenner’s reputation. Subsequently, in September 2024, he founded a fund of the same name, Situational Awareness LP, and became its Chief Investment Officer, focusing on AI industry investment opportunities.
The initial fund size of Situational Awareness LP has not been publicly disclosed, but according to mainstream media outlets like WSJ and Fortune in mid-2025, the fund’s assets under management were approximately $1.5 billion. LPs included Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and well-known investor Daniel Gross.
Based on the 13F filings disclosed by Situational Awareness LP (quarterly reports required by the SEC for funds managing over $100 million), at the end of Q4 2024, the fund’s public holdings totaled only about $255 million, but by the Q4 2025 disclosure announced on February 16, that number had grown to an astonishing $5.5 billion.
Considering that Situational Awareness LP was newly established in Q4 2024, it likely had some reserve capital beyond its disclosed $255 million position. Even if we take the mid-2025 AUM of around $1.5 billion as a starting point, the increase to $5.5 billion in Q4 of the same year is remarkably rapid.
Portfolio Analysis: Still Has Crypto Shadows
Situational Awareness LP disclosed its top 29 holdings in the 13F, as shown below.
As shown, Situational Awareness LP’s bets on AI are not concentrated on the more popular consumer applications but focus on upstream infrastructure sectors.
- The top ten holdings account for 86% of the portfolio, indicating a highly concentrated strategy mainly in energy, computing power, optical communications, and storage.
- The largest position, Bloom Energy, focuses on solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and electrolysis (SOEC) technology development. Driven by increasing demand from AI data centers, the company’s performance has continued to exceed expectations, with its stock price rising over 10 times since late 2024.
- Major stocks like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are absent from the holdings, suggesting a preference for relatively “less popular” targets.
- The only disclosed short position is in Indian software exporter Infosys, via options, seemingly betting that developments in Claude Code and Codex will replace traditional IT outsourcing work.
Another clue related to the crypto world is that the holdings include several Bitcoin mining companies, such as Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, Iren (formerly Iris Energy), and Bitdeer, owned by Wu Jihan.
However, it’s clear that what they’re betting on isn’t direct crypto operations but rather a shift of mining companies toward AI compute centers — as AI trends grow and crypto markets remain sluggish, more miners are leveraging land, computing power, and electricity resources to actively transform. We will publish an article on this trend soon.
Diverging Paths, Rebuilding Beliefs
Looking back at Leopold Aschenbrenner’s career, it’s hard not to think of another young genius with a halo, SBF — both worked at FTX, believed in effective altruism, and achieved notable investment success. But after one wrong step, SBF is now behind bars, facing decades in prison; meanwhile, Leopold Aschenbrenner’s life took a different fork after FTX’s sudden collapse, and fortunately, it seems to be a path better suited for him.
Time cannot turn back, and fate never gives a second chance. Some are forever left in the ruins of the old era, while others are forced off their original tracks but open new chapters.
As someone in the crypto industry, what comes to mind now is — the industry is at its most uncertain and fragile moment since its inception. Some leave in disappointment, some hesitate and watch, but others actively embrace new technological waves and narratives. History often repeats itself: when old stories collapse, new stories are born. Rebuilding faith may well be another kind of opportunity.
