Author: Azuma
Original Title: SBF's Protege Turned $225 Million into $5.5 Billion in One Year
Have you heard of Leopold Aschenbrenner?
He is one of the hottest names in the AI investment circle right now — at just 24 years old, the public holdings of his Situational Awareness LP fund were "only" $225 million in Q4 2024, but in the Q4 2025 holdings disclosure released last month, that number has skyrocketed to $5.5 billion.
What few people know is that Leopold Aschenbrenner was once part of the crypto world — he worked for the FTX Future Fund team under FTX until the collapse of FTX.
The AI Prodigy from a Family of Doctors
Leopold Aschenbrenner was born in Germany to parents who are both doctors.
In 2021, the 19-year-old Leopold Aschenbrenner graduated first in his class from Columbia University with dual degrees in economics and mathematical statistics. During his time at Columbia, he co-founded the university's "Effective Altruism" (EA) chapter.
"Effective Altruism" was a principle often espoused by FTX founder SBF. Perhaps due to shared beliefs, Leopold Aschenbrenner joined the FTX Future Fund team in February 2022. This was a charitable initiative created by the FTX Foundation to advance effective altruism. Leopold Aschenbrenner worked on this team until just before FTX's collapse in November 2022.
In 2023, having left FTX, Leopold Aschenbrenner turned to OpenAI, now a leading AI company, joining the Superalignment team led by luminaries Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike. This team focused on technological breakthroughs to guide and control AI systems smarter than humans.
In April 2023, OpenAI's internal communication system was hacked, but the company did not disclose this publicly. Leopold Aschenbrenner promptly submitted a memo to the OpenAI board, arguing that OpenAI's security measures were inadequate. He later stated that this memo caused a rift between the board and management regarding security issues, and he himself received a warning from Human Resources.
In April 2024, OpenAI fired Leopold Aschenbrenner for alleged information disclosure, but he countered that the so-called "leak" was actually him sharing a brainstorming document with three external researchers solely to solicit feedback. OpenAI claimed the dismissal was unrelated to the security memo Leopold Aschenbrenner had previously submitted, while he stated that someone explicitly told him the memo was the main reason for his firing. Just one month later, the Superalignment team disbanded, and other prominent AI researchers, including Ilya Sutskever, also left OpenAI.
Interestingly, Leopold Aschenbrenner's conflicts with OpenAI didn't end there — his fiancée, Avital Balwit, is now the Chief of Staff at Anthropic, OpenAI's biggest competitor... and FTX was once a major early investor in Anthropic.
Leaving the Tech Frontlines, Entering the Investment World
In June 2024, just two months after leaving OpenAI, Leopold Aschenbrenner wrote a massive 165-page paper titled "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead". The paper contained multiple chapters predicting the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), outlining the path from AGI to superintelligence, describing four major risks facing humanity, detailing methods for humanity to cope with superintelligence, and expounding on the principles of "AGI Realism".
The paper "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" sparked significant discussion in Silicon Valley, and Leopold Aschenbrenner's reputation soared. Subsequently, in September 2024, Leopold Aschenbrenner founded the namesake fund, Situational Awareness LP, serving as its Chief Investment Officer, focusing on investment opportunities in the AI industry chain.
There is no public information on the initial fund size of Situational Awareness LP, but according to mainstream media reports like WSJ and Fortune in mid-2025, the fund's total assets under management (AUM) were approximately $1.5 billion at that time. Limited Partners (LPs) included Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and renowned investor Daniel Gross.
According to the 13F filing disclosed by Situational Awareness LP (a quarterly disclosure document required by the SEC for funds with AUM exceeding $100 million), in Q4 2024, the total value of Situational Awareness LP's public holdings was "only" $255 million. However, in the Q4 2025 holdings disclosure just released on February 16th of this year, that number has grown to a staggering $5.5 billion.
Considering that Situational Awareness LP was not long established in Q4 2024, the fund likely had some capital reserves beyond the disclosed $255 million position. But even taking the mid-2025 AUM of around $1.5 billion as the starting line, the fact that the disclosed position grew to $5.5 billion by Q4 of the same year is astonishingly fast.
Holdings Analysis: Still Shadows of the Crypto World
Situational Awareness LP disclosed its main 29 holdings in the 13F filing; details can be seen in the chart below.
As shown, Situational Awareness LP's bets on AI are not concentrated on the more hyped application layer but focus further upstream on the foundational infrastructure supply chain.
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The top ten holdings of Situational Awareness LP account for a high 86% of the portfolio, indicating a highly concentrated strategy, primarily deployed in energy, computing power, optical communications, and storage sectors.
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The largest position, Bloom Energy, focuses on the research and development of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and electrolyzer (SOEC) technologies. Driven by growing demand from AI data centers, the company's performance has consistently exceeded expectations, and its stock price has increased over 10-fold since the end of 2024.
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Hot picks like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google do not appear in the holdings, suggesting Situational Awareness LP prefers relatively "less popular" targets.
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The only disclosed short position by Situational Awareness LP is an options-based short on Indian software services exporter Infosys, seemingly betting that the development of Claude Code and Codex will replace traditional IT outsourcing work.
Another clue somewhat connected to the crypto world is that several Bitcoin mining companies can be seen in Situational Awareness LP's holdings, such as Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, Iren (formerly Iris Energy), and Jihan Wu's Bitdeer.
Unfortunately, what Situational Awareness LP is clearly betting on is not these companies' direct crypto-related businesses, but rather their transformation into AI computing centers — in an environment where AI trends are booming and crypto markets are sluggish, more and more mining companies are actively transforming, leveraging their existing resource advantages in land, computing power, and electricity. A preview: we will have another article on this trend soon.
The Fork in the Road of Fate, The Reconstruction of Belief
Looking back at Leopold Aschenbrenner's career, it's hard not to think of another once-celebrated young prodigy, SBF — both worked at FTX, both believed in effective altruism, and both delivered remarkable investment results. But after one misstep, SBF is now a prisoner, facing decades more in prison ahead. On the other hand, Leopold Aschenbrenner's life took a different fork in the road following FTX's overnight collapse, but fortunately, this seems to be a path better suited for him.
Time does not rewind, and fate never offers a chance to restart. Some are forever left in the ruins of the old era, while others are forced off their original track, only to unveil a completely new story.
As part of the Crypto industry, the thought that comes to my mind is — the industry is currently at a moment of unprecedented shaky confidence, a time of breaking and building. Some leave in disappointment, some watch hesitantly, but others are actively embracing new technological waves and narrative shifts. History often works this way; the collapse of the old story is often the birth moment of a new one. The reconstruction of belief is, in its own way, another opportunity.
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