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Revisiting the U.S. Stock Market: Deconstructing Leopold Aschenbrenner's Positioning Logic

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Forget Nvidia, Bet on Bloom Energy – What Was He Thinking?

Original Video Title: Forget NVIDIA | This 24-Year-Old's $4.5B Bet on AI's Real Problem (Leopold Aschenbrenner)
Original Video Source: Limitless Podcast
Original Article Translation: DeepTech TechFlow

Key Points Summary

Recently, everyone has been talking about Leopold Aschenbrenner — a 24-year-old, $5.5 billion AI hedge fund manager, dubbed the wunderkind of the U.S. stock market. However, most discussions have only scratched the surface, focusing on how impressive he is and how much money he has made, without delving into the detailed analysis of his investment logic.

Two months ago, the Limitless Podcast did an episode where they dissected his 13F filing:

Why he exited his position in NVIDIA, why he allocated 20% of his portfolio to a fuel cell company, why he acquired a slew of Bitcoin mining companies, why he shorted Infosys. At the time, this episode received little attention. Looking back now, many of his insights have proven prescient, warranting a review.

Highlights of Insights

Regarding Leopold Aschenbrenner's Investment Performance

· "Last year, he was managing $1 billion in funds... Today, just one year later, that $1 billion has grown to $5.5 billion."

· "His fund was launched at the end of 2024 with an initial size of $255 million. Within a mere 6 months, his fund outperformed the S&P 500 index by 8 times."

· "In a 165-page article titled 'Situational Awareness,' he essentially predicts that we will achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by 2027."

Shift in Investment Paradigm: From Chips to Infrastructure

· "He offloaded NVIDIA, Broadcom, TSMC, Micron. These are all major AI infrastructure companies."

·"By the end of 2025 or early 2026, he believes the market has mostly fully reflected the value of the GPU."

·"He has shifted his focus to the primary bottleneck that investors have not yet adequately addressed—energy and infrastructure."

·"The existing power grid was designed for humans, not to meet the immense AI demands we face today. That is where his current investment focus lies."

Core Holding: Bloom Energy

·"Bloom Energy is his largest current investment target, accounting for 20% of the entire portfolio... He has built a significant position in this company, with an amount as high as $855 million."

·"Bloom Energy has developed a device called a solid oxide fuel cell... that can directly convert natural gas into power usable by data centers. It is modular and can be rapidly deployed."

·"They have a backlog of orders amounting to $20 billion. Revenue in 2025 grew by approximately 34%, with an estimated further 40% growth in 2026."

·"If you use a product like Bloom Energy's natural gas turbine, you do not need to rely on the power grid at all. You just need to install it next to an AI data center."

Infrastructure and the 'Shortcut' to Bitcoin Mining

·"Leopold made a significant investment in CoreWeave. He made the most leveraged investment in core GPU infrastructure and energy supply."

·"He invested in many Bitcoin mining companies... because these companies have the two key elements needed to build AI infrastructure: land and power."

·"He acquired these companies to obtain their licenses and grid access. Typically, obtaining these licenses takes months or even years."

·"It's a bit like taking over a bar that already has a liquor license instead of applying for a new license and waiting for years, which is a very clever 'shortcut.'"

Short Logic and the End of IT Outsourcing

·「He has a specific company in his crosshairs, and that company is Infosys... Their business model relies entirely on providing cheaper labor compared to Western countries.」

·「He realized that these models are now powerful enough not only to automate simple tasks but also to handle some very critical IT processes, so he took a massive short position on this company.」

Investment Philosophy: A Return to the Physical World

·「Companies that rely solely on software will face significant challenges in the future. His pivot is not just around building architecture but is an investment in the physical world, such as manufacturing, factories, energy, and infrastructure.」

·「These are areas that cannot be built by AI but require manpower, licensing, and legislation to achieve hardware and infrastructure.」

·「Energy is the one resource that is not sufficiently available to everyone... It all revolves around one core: powering the future.」

Youthful Investment Prodigy Leopold Ashbrer

Josh Kale: There's a person named Leopold Ashbrer, who is 24 years old this year. We covered him in a show last year when he was just 23, managing $1 billion in funds, focusing on investing in cutting-edge AI concepts and technologies. And today, just a year later, that $1 billion has grown to $5.5 billion.

This much younger guy than both of us has just completed a groundbreaking performance, making more money in AI than any other fund in the world. More importantly, AI is the hottest market right now, which means the competition is fierce. So obviously, this guy named Leopold is doing something different.

Just last week, his latest 13F report was released, and we can finally peek into his recent trading activities. So next, we will closely examine these filings to see what this person has done to grow the funds he manages from $1 billion to $5.5 billion.

Insights from the 13F Report

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: He accomplished all this within 12 months. His fund was established at the end of 2024 with an initial size of $255 million. And in just 6 months, his fund outperformed the S&P 500 index by 8 times, growing to $2 billion. Since we last discussed his third-quarter fund report on the show, his fund has grown by another $1.5 billion. So, he is now in the midst of a groundbreaking surge.

He is very young, he has made quite a pivot, but all of this is in line with what he calls the “Bible” — a 165-page article titled “Situational Awareness.”

In this article, he basically predicts we will reach Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by 2027. In this grand article, he elaborately describes his view on how the AI revolution will unfold. His predictions are almost entirely correct; he successfully foresaw the trend of GPU infrastructure, and now he has put forth another very significant pivot, which we will delve into next.

Shift from Chips to Infrastructure

Josh Kale: I think the whole investment thesis is shifting from chips to infrastructure. What we are seeing on the screen right now is very intriguing. He has created a document with Claude that will guide us through the entire changelog from last year to this year. Perhaps we can start by talking about the assets he has divested because the scale of these divestments is quite significant, including NVIDIA, where he sold $300 million worth of put options in one quarter.

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: You will see that many of the stocks he sold off are very popular companies that many people are currently investing in. So the question arises, why did he divest $1 billion worth of shares in these companies? He sold off NVIDIA, Broadcom, TSMC, and Micron. These are all major AI infrastructure companies.

Him selling off NVIDIA’s shares actually made him money as he held $300 million worth of put options, meaning that due to NVIDIA's stock price drop over the past few months, he likely profited from it. So the question is, why did he do this?

In his 165-page paper, he mentioned that by the end of 2025 or early 2026, he believed the market had essentially fully priced in the value of GPUs. This value primarily comes from companies like NVIDIA and Broadcom that manufacture these chips, which are then stacked and used by AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic to train models.

And now, he has shifted his focus to a major bottleneck that investors have not fully paid attention to — energy and infrastructure. Currently, a key issue faced by many AI labs is: first, they have too many GPUs; second, the existing power grid is designed for humans, not to meet the massive AI demands we face today. This is where his current investment focus lies.

Shorting NVIDIA Put Options

Josh Kale: It was fascinating to see him shorting NVIDIA put options and completely divesting from NVIDIA. Because whenever I chat with friends or interact with the regular folks on Wall Street, NVIDIA is a company everyone talks about, the top investment pick.

So, seeing him pivot away from NVIDIA, I think once again proves that he is always ahead of the curve, always able to foresee future trends rather than dwell on past hot topics. In his view, the future focus is on infrastructure, shifting from chips to digitization play.

This might be where we can delve deeper into his new investments, as these are the stocks you should be keeping an eye on. These are his current holdings, the targets he believes will grow in the future. If his judgment is right, we should potentially see significant returns. So, what new investments did he make this quarter?

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: Here is a very neat investment portfolio chart that categorizes Leopold Ashbrer's entire investments by the AI tech stack. We can see the investments segmented into power production, real estate and facilities, computing and hosting, connectivity, storage and memory, chips and silicon, and other categories.

In fact, I would like to add to the previous discussion, I noticed he made a very clever move with Intel. He sold off his shares but still held a massive long position. In this way, he unlocked liquidity, redirecting funds to other companies.

The primary company he poured a substantial amount of funds into is a power production-focused company called Bloom Energy. This company was almost unheard of about three months ago, but they specialize in producing turbines for powering AI data centers.

He has built a massive position in this company, amounting to $855 million. Although it shows $876 million here, the report states $855 million.

Bloom Energy: Powering Innovation

Josh Kale: Bloom Energy is his current largest investment target, accounting for 20% of the entire investment portfolio. This is completely unrelated to the semiconductor field and is a completely different direction. I looked into their business and found it really interesting.

Bloom Energy has developed a device called a solid oxide fuel cell, which is an advanced technology for on-site power generation from natural gas. Typically, when natural gas is transported to a data center, it needs to be heated and cooled through a turbine, which is a very clumsy energy production process.

However, Bloom Energy's "fuel box" can directly convert natural gas into electricity usable by data centers. It is modular, can be rapidly deployed, and seems to have no supply shortage issues. As far as I know, they plan to generate 2 gigawatts of power this year.

This is a very interesting energy play. I've been looking for a "NVIDIA of the energy sector"—in other words, an "energy sector chipmaker". So far, I haven't found a company that directly corresponds, but perhaps Bloom Energy could become such a company.

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: I also reviewed their recent financial report since they are a publicly traded company. Their backlog of orders stands at $20 billion. Revenue for 2025 has grown by about 34%, and they expect another 40% revenue growth in 2026; evidently, their demand is outstripping supply.

You mentioned solid oxide fuel cells. The appeal of their natural gas turbines is that they do not need to rely on the existing grid. As I mentioned earlier, the current grid is under significant pressure because humans need energy, and AI data centers also need energy, leading to a rise in energy prices in areas where AI data centers are located.

If you use products like Bloom Energy's natural gas turbines, you completely eliminate the need for the grid. You just need to install it next to an AI data center to obtain cost-effective power for training or inferencing on your GPUs and data centers.

Companies like Broadcom and CoreWeave will all require this kind of energy, especially those massive-scale cloud computing service providers and AI labs. This reminds me of the game Civilization; I don't know if you've played it, but this situation is like moving infrastructure and energy production facilities to your small settlement to drive its development, and what's happening here is very similar to that scenario.

Josh Kale: It is clear that there is no shortage of energy; the issue lies in who can produce the most energy. They indeed have a very large backlog of orders, but the question is, can they produce enough products to fulfill these orders?

Manufacturing capacity has become a key issue here. In many such investments, we are entering a "nano" world, where the manufacturing sector is becoming truly critical. I am eager to delve deeper into this in the future to see if they truly have the capability for large-scale production. But for now, this is undoubtedly a very important investment area, representing 20% of his portfolio. So, what other notable positions are there in his new portfolio?

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: He also added about $300 million in investment in CoreWeave. Imagine as an AI lab, you need GPUs. But buying GPUs from companies like NVIDIA is just part of the job.

Deploying these GPUs into rack servers, providing power, conducting technical engineering support, and maintaining GPU servers and cooling systems are a whole other story. So you can outsource these tasks to a company called a "next-gen cloud provider," which is CoreWeave, as they specialize in handling these affairs.

Broadcom also offers similar services to some extent, but CoreWeave is a smaller company that initially focused on services in the GPU gaming era and has now shifted to catering specifically to AI. Leopold made a substantial investment in CoreWeave.

In our previous discussion in the third quarter, he had already invested $500 million, and this time he has added an additional $300 million investment. Now, his total investment in CoreWeave may have reached $800 million, but the story goes deeper. He also owns around a 10% stake in one of CoreWeave's key suppliers, Core Scientific, a company that specializes in building the power grid for CoreWeave.

When considering the betting strategy in investments, Leopold may have made the most leveraged investments in the core GPU infrastructure (such as CoreWeave's next-gen cloud services) and energy supply (such as Bloom Energy), which are the two major positions in his current fund.

Bitcoin Mining

Josh Kale: What I find interesting is that he has already started acquiring enough stake in these companies to become an activist investor, able to influence the decision-making of these companies. I find that very intriguing. As I delved into his investment portfolio, apart from the obvious direction of power generation, I noticed that the most positions he added were actually real estate-related investments, adding about 10 positions related to real estate, and this is related to Bitcoin mining.

What we are seeing now is that he has invested in many Bitcoin mining companies. This seems a bit strange, even counterintuitive. After all, the cryptocurrency market is not booming, and Bitcoin's performance is not great. Why would he buy into these Bitcoin mining companies? The reason is that these companies have the two key elements needed to build AI infrastructure: land and power.

What does Bitcoin mining require? It requires a large amount of energy and sufficient space to place GPU racks. While Bitcoin mining is not completely on the decline right now, the real estate and power resources of these companies can clearly bring a better risk-return profile. It seems like he is betting that these Bitcoin mining companies will either sell their land use rights and permits or will directly transition into AI data centers.

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: It is important to note that his interest in these companies is not for mining; he acquires these companies to obtain their permits and grid access. Typically, acquiring these permits takes several months, if not years.

This is why we see companies like Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI announce $1.4 trillion worth of compute partnerships, yet these partnerships have not fully translated into the models they are rolling out. This is also why GPU supply always lags behind the latest generation, as they cannot obtain these permits in a timely manner.

Leopold, on the other hand, acquires these small companies that already have permits, bypassing the entire permission process. He completely strips these companies of their crypto services, repurposing them for AI model training specifically, and becoming providers of infrastructure for these AI labs.

This is a bit like taking over a bar that already has a liquor sales license instead of applying for a new license yourself and waiting for years, which is a very smart "shortcut."

AGI and Market Trends

Josh Kale: One of the investment philosophies I admire most about him, and the process of seeing these philosophies validated over the past year, is its simplicity and efficiency. For example, a Bitcoin mining company evidently has the licenses and energy, and evidently, every AI company needs these resources.

So why isn't everyone buying these companies? I think it's because these ideas are too simple, and many people are blocked from investing. But time and time again, his simple ideas have been proven correct.

So, will Leopold's prediction of achieving AGI in 2027 also be correct? Will we really achieve AGI in 2027?

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: To validate this prediction, we opened a prediction market on Polymarket, predicting whether OpenAI will announce the achievement of AGI before 2027. At the time Leopold proposed this fund, many people did not favor his prediction, but now the probability in this prediction market is 13%. So, it seems a bit out of reach. Perhaps his investment philosophy is correct, but the timeline may be slightly off.

This probability is indeed very small. However, I must say, he was initially criticized for this paper, with many thinking his views were too far-fetched and unrealistic. About 50% of people believe AGI will be achieved in the next few months, while others believe it will be achieved by 2030. Leopold is the only one who has put forward the 2027 prediction and is currently the closest to being accurate.

He predicted the importance of GPUs before the GPU craze broke out. Now, he has made a prediction before the energy infrastructure craze arrives. So I think he is still ahead in this respect.

However, in his investment portfolio, he not only has long positions, he also holds a short position in a specific company, which is Infosys, a company focused on IT outsourcing, with the primary business in India. Their business model relies entirely on providing cheaper labor than Western countries (such as the United States or Europe). In simple terms, "outsource all your administrative IT work to us, and we'll take care of it for you."

I believe his bet here is based on the trends he has observed. He has seen the rise of products like Claude Code and GPT Codex 5.3 and realized that these models are now powerful enough to not only automate simple tasks but also handle some very critical IT processes, so he took a massive short position on this company.

I think this is one of his more profound investments, aligning more with the trends we are currently seeing, showing that he is willing to back his views with significant resources.

Bull Market and Bear Market

Josh Kale: Let's discuss the reasons for a bull market and the reasons for a bear market. When you enter such an investment portfolio, what are the criticisms or cautions worth mentioning? The first thing that comes to mind is that this investor is only 24 years old, and I am not sure if he has as much experience as many other investors. In a way, this may be an advantage, but will this advantage collapse at some point?

Another concern of mine is that the investment philosophy of this fund is somewhat like a single-theme bet. If the growth rate of AI infrastructure and related expenditures slows down, or if the macroeconomic environment changes, every position in this investment portfolio could face downward pressure. There is hardly any room for much hedging here. So, this strategy does indeed have some potential flaws, but as of now, all signals indicate that the fund's performance will only continue to rise.

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: If you look at some of the most famous investors of our time, their success has never been about how much money they made in a particular year or quarter, but about whether they could consistently achieve stable returns year after year and realize compound growth.

Leopold's start has been very impressive, his performance far exceeding the average of any industry hedge fund, not only in the AI field, but he still needs to prove himself over a longer time horizon; time will tell if he can.

I just want to say that this man who was once fired by OpenAI has a profound insight into the future development of AI, making the boldest predictions, and he is the only one so far who has been almost entirely accurate in all his predictions. He poured his heart into his 165-page paper, full of confidence in his views, and so far, everything seems to be paying off for him.

Will the future change? Perhaps. But you can consider these reports and investments as real-time tracking tools for his view on the bottleneck in the AI race. Originally, his fund's investment thesis focused on GPUs. He believed that GPUs would become a hot demand, and the market underestimated this opportunity.

Now his view is that this opportunity has already been fully priced in by the market, and he sees the next bottleneck shifting towards energy infrastructure.

Look at someone like Elon Musk, who is launching data centers into space. Why?

Because the sun provides more energy. And then there are companies like Google, Meta, Broadcom, and NVIDIA, all of which are investing in data centers or data center infrastructure to secure access to the grid. He is simply putting money where these demands are, and I think that's a smart move.

Josh Kale: I recently read a great article by Naval, and its core idea is that pure software-reliant companies will become very difficult in the future because developing and generating custom software is now very easy. I think this shift of his is not only about building architecture but investing in the physical world, such as manufacturing, factories, energy, and infrastructure.

These are areas that cannot be built through AI but require manpower, permits, legislation to achieve hardware and infrastructure. I believe this is the direction of the future.

Energy is the only resource that everyone cannot get enough of. Whether it's power generation or real estate investment, everything revolves around one core: powering the future. In the last earnings season, just a few companies like Google, Amazon, and NVIDIA pledged $650 billion in capital expenditure, which is enough to indicate that a significant amount of funds will be invested in addressing this issue, and his portfolio is clearly ready to capture all the upside opportunities.

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: Yes, he indeed made some investments that you might consider high-risk. For example, unless you are very familiar with the energy infrastructure sector, many people may have never even heard of Bloom Energy.

However, this company can be seen as a first-tier, even top-tier energy company, especially in portable power. He connected these dots, believing that the grid couldn't support the current demand, so he decided to invest in this company. He put in a substantial amount of money with high conviction. We're talking about, he allocated almost one-fifth of his entire investment portfolio to this one target.

This is an extremely concentrated, high-risk, high-conviction investment approach. But if successful, this is why his portfolio was able to achieve a 4.5 to 5x return in a year and a half. We have to give him credit for appreciating $1 billion to $5.5 billion in one year; it's just incredible.

Leopold's Investment Future

Josh Kale: All in all, it's quite impressive what he's been able to achieve, and his recent shift from hardware to infrastructure to energy looks like the right direction, with very promising prospects. If you agree with his portfolio, maybe this is an opportunity worth considering. Of course, this is not investment advice; it's just one person's portfolio, but it does seem very promising and could perform exceptionally well this year.

Josh Kale: I'm also curious what our listeners think. I want to know if you think our investment analysis is at a professional level, if we've reached Leopold's level, or if you believe we're completely wrong and overlooking some obvious stories.

Ejaaz Ahamadeen: You know what I want? I want to know what your favorite stock of the year is.

Josh Kale: Yes, Leopold bet on Bloom Energy. I want to know, what is your Bloom Energy? What did we miss that we need to watch out for to achieve 5x growth again this year?