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By analyzing the 13F quarterly filing, the reason behind the downfall of the "AI Stock Guru" has been uncovered.

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Situational Awareness has released its pre-crash position report, unfortunately, it shifted to a full bullish view too early.

Original Title: "Today, the World Finally Sees Why the 'AI Stock God' Collapsed"

On August 15, Beijing time, the fund Situational Awareness LP, led by Leopold Aschenbrenner, once hailed as the "AI Stock God" by the market, officially released its 13F quarterly holdings report.

· The so-called 13F is a quarterly disclosure document that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires funds with assets under management exceeding $100 million to submit. The SEC mandates that compliant funds must submit this document within 45 days after the end of each natural quarter, focusing on disclosing the fund's holdings of U.S. listed stocks, long/short options, convertible bonds, and specific ETF positions at the end of the previous quarter.

However, just a few weeks ago, Situational Awareness LP experienced a dark moment—due to a sharp downturn in AI-related stocks combined with high leverage, the fund suffered significant losses, was forced to liquidate a large portion of its public market positions, and had to sell most of its stock portfolio at a discount to Ken Griffin's Citadel.

Although the temporary fall of the "AI Stock God" has become a reality, for the market, this belated 13F quarterly holdings report still holds significant meaning—it fully presents the static holdings of the fund on the eve of its downfall (as of June 30), in other words, the market finally has a close-up view of how Situational Awareness LP transitioned into a massive loss.

In the following sections, Odaily will guide everyone to collectively interpret Situational Awareness LP's current quarter 13F holding structure and analyze the changes in holdings from this quarter to the previous one, revealing Situational Awareness LP's most genuine loss story.

Who is the "AI Stock God"? (Skip if familiar)

In March of this year, we first introduced Leopold Aschenbrenner in the article "SBF's Younger Brother, Turning $225 Million into $5.5 Billion in One Year."

Leopold Aschenbrenner served at FTX's Future Fund in 2022 and remained with the team until the FTX debacle. In 2024, Leopold Aschenbrenner authored a 165-page magnum opus titled "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" and went on to establish the eponymous Situational Awareness LP fund, where he serves as the Chief Investment Officer.

Situational Awareness LP focuses on investment opportunities in the AI industry chain. The fund's publicly disclosed holdings in Q4 2024 were a "mere" $2.25 billion. However, in the Q4 2025 holdings disclosure released in February of this year, that number skyrocketed to $5.5 billion. By the time the Q1 holdings were disclosed in May of this year, the number had risen to $13.7 billion... Although these numbers have now lost their significance, the latest Q2 holdings report disclosed today reveals that the fund's nominal holdings value has soared to a staggering $20.2 billion.

· It is worth noting that in the U.S. stock 13F filings, the reported value of options assets usually reflects their corresponding underlying stock's "Notional Value," rather than the actual options premium cost paid by the fund.

With an explosive investment performance, Leopold Aschenbrenner and Situational Awareness LP gained widespread fame, becoming one of the most watched AI investment trends online. Leopold Aschenbrenner was even dubbed the "AI Stock God" by a market eager to deify.

Q2 Holdings Analysis: $20.2 Billion, Almost All-In on One Bet

As of June 30, Situational Awareness LP disclosed a total of 26 holdings in its 13F filing, with a nominal holdings value of approximately $20.24 billion. Further deconstructing this "pre-debacle ledger," it is evident that the fund had doubled down on the continued surge of AI infrastructure with highly concentrated positions.

The most striking aspect of the holdings structure undoubtedly lies in the concentrated bets on SanDisk (SNDK) and Micron (MU) – the former holding about $5.674 billion, accounting for 28.0%; the latter around $5.574 billion, making up 27.5% – just these two companies total a combined $11.2 billion, approximately 55.5% of the entire portfolio.

In other words, on the eve of the fund's collapse, Leopold Aschenbrenner had staked more than half of the public market exposure on storage chips alone.

And upon further dissection, the investment thesis of Situational Awareness LP becomes even more clear: approximately $18.99 billion held in Bloom Energy, betting on the power demand behind AI data centers; around $12.65 billion in TSMC, corresponding to advanced fabrication processes; $12.33 billion in Nebius, as well as CoreWeave, Core Scientific, Applied Digital, IREN, etc., further covering AI cloud computing power, data centers, and energy infrastructure…

Therefore, on the surface, although Situational Awareness LP holds positions in over 20 different stocks (including options), most of the portfolio actually points to the same core thesis—if reclassified according to the industry chain, the majority of positions are all aimed at one central assumption: the AI computing power demand will continue to surge, benefiting the entire chain of industries such as chips, storage, computing power, electricity, and data centers.

This also means that Situational Awareness LP is almost entirely betting on the continued surge of the "AI infrastructure development." In fair weather, this combination can indeed gain far more elasticity in price increases than a single stock; however, conversely, when AI infrastructure-related assets retract simultaneously, the risks that were originally diversified across different companies will quickly resonate.

Especially in the presence of leverage, the combination of "high concentration" and "high leverage" can quickly brew a liquidity crisis, as we witnessed a few weeks ago.

Q1 was once highly cautious, while Q2 turned overwhelmingly bullish

Prior to the release of this quarter's 13F report, I had a lingering question.

In the Q1 holdings report disclosed in May of this year, Situational Awareness LP clearly expressed caution about the overheated short-term market for chips and storage—at the end of Q1, Situational Awareness LP had held nominal put options worth over $8 billion covering chip and storage giants (including SMH, NVDA, ORCL, AVGO, AMD, ASML, etc.), accounting for over sixty percent of the fund's nominal holdings. If they were to maintain this position, the subsequent market downturn should align with Leopold Aschenbrenner's prediction, so why did it all end in such a sorry state?

It wasn't until today, after the new 13F filing was released, revealing the position changes of Situational Awareness LP, that this question was finally answered—Leopold Aschenbrenner himself cut the safety rope he had once tied.

In the Q2 holdings report, Situational Awareness LP's "reduction list" was truly staggering—all chip and storage put options were completely liquidated. SMH Put (-14.94%), NVDA Bear ETF Put (-11.47%), ORCL Put (-7.84%), AVGO Put (-7.36%), AMD Put (-7.09%), TSM Put (-3.91%), ASML Put (-3.61%)...

These hedge positions that once formed the portfolio's risk floor were all abandoned by Situational Awareness LP in Q2. At the same time, the Q1 call options on MU and SNDK were also closed out (-3.09%, -2.84%), replaced by direct holdings—MU soared to the second largest position at $55.74 billion, while SNDK claimed the top spot with $56.74 billion.

The "addition list" further revealed the flow of funds—apart from the two storage stocks mentioned above, Taiwan Semiconductor ADR (+6.19%), Nebius (+6.09%, new), STMicroelectronics STM (+2.89%, new), SharonAI (+2.12%, new), Keel Infrastructure (+0.75%, new), and others all entered the portfolio. From European wafer fabs to a Russian-backed AI cloud services provider, from power infrastructure to a Bitcoin mining company, Leopold Aschenbrenner completed a thorough shift from a "hedged portfolio" to an "unprotected long-only" strategy in Q2.

The cost of this shift became apparent at the end of July. When the AI sector experienced a systemic pullback, the put options insurance from Q1 could have partially absorbed the impact, but by Q2, the fund had no short positions as protection—holding a portfolio worth tens of billions of dollars, highly concentrated, and highly correlated, under leverage, its fragility far exceeded market expectations.

Although the 13F does not disclose leverage ratios, from this record of "clearing out puts and loading up on longs," we can already see the most ill-conceived move by Situational Awareness LP.

Defeat Is Inevitable, But the Future Is Still Promising

The later part of the story is already well known to everyone.

Entering July, the AI and storage sectors experienced a systemic sell-off, causing heavy losses to the positions Situational Awareness LP had bet on, including two major holdings, Micron and SanDisk. Based on the closing prices on June 30, as of July 29, rumors of Situational Awareness LP facing a liquidity crisis began to spread, with Micron (MU) falling from $1154 to $739, a drop of approximately 35.9%; while SanDisk (SNDK) plummeted from $2274 to $1016, a decline of 55.3%.

Amplified by leverage, these declines quickly eroded all of Situational Awareness LP's safety net. Ultimately, the former glory of the "AI Stock God" was discountedly taken by Ken Griffin.

Fortunately, Leopold Aschenbrenner is still young, with a long life ahead. Most importantly, he still holds one key card—a portfolio of investments in private companies, including Anthropic shares. For a 25-year-old investor, the first major defeat in the capital markets may have already occurred, but this may not necessarily be the end of his investment career.