The trades made by a former AI researcher turned hedge funder offer a bearish view of where the stock market’s popular trade is headed.
Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former researcher on OpenAI’s coordinating team, made headlines in 2024 with his paper “Situational Awareness: The Next Decade,” which highlighted key concerns about advances in AI. Three months later, he launched his own hedge fund, Situational Awareness, and is now betting on the hottest chip plays while taking a bullish stance on other areas of AI infrastructure trading.
The company bought more than $1.5 billion in Nvidia put options and more than $2 billion in VanEck Semiconductor ETF put options in the first quarter of this year, according to its latest 13F filing (May 18). Puts allow investors to bet that the price of a stock or ETF will go down, while call options let investors bet that the stock price will go up.
Mr. Aschenbrenner’s fund also has more than $1 billion in puts on Broadcom and more than $1 billion in puts on software giant Oracle.
Below is a list of some of the company’s bearish put option bets.
The recent put disclosures of several major stocks in the AI industry came as other large investors expressed doubts. Big Short investor Michael Varley has disclosed a short position in Nvidia in late 2025, and is generally bearish on the technology-driven rally that has propelled the stock market to record levels.
Meanwhile, last week, short seller Calper Research released a short-term report on Nvidia, warning that the stock could fall due to China issues.
Among the stocks in which Situational Awareness had long positions or bullish call options, Situational Awareness was leaning toward a few other chipmakers, but also into infrastructure stocks like Coreweave.
Here are some of those call option positions:
Situational Awareness did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.