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Situational Awareness 13F: Micron and Sandisk dominated fund before July collapse
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The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational. Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund, Situational Awareness, held more than half its portfolio in Sandisk and Micron Technology stock at the end of June, just before both positions collapsed in July, according to a 13F regulatory filing released last Friday, according to CNBC. Sandisk topped the fund's disclosed U.S. holdings at $5.7 billion, with Micron just behind at $5.6 billion, according to CNBC. Together, the two memory chip stocks accounted for more than 56% of the fund's holdings, according to MarketWatch. Sandisk stock fell nearly 47% in July; Micron stock dropped roughly 29%. The fund's three other top positions were also among July's worst performers. Bloom Energy slid 32%, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing lost 15%, and Nebius Group fell 31%. The fund also held $745 million in CoreWeave, another AI infrastructure name that declined during the selloff. Because the 13F covers only U.S.-listed long positions held at the end of June, it offers an incomplete view of the fund's overall risk profile and the trading activity behind its losses. The fund's approach centered on accumulating stakes in businesses that stood to benefit from AI's physical buildout — memory chipmakers, data center operators, and power providers — while simultaneously shorting software companies Aschenbrenner believed would be undermined by the technology. According to the filing, Aschenbrenner had been increasing exposure to several of those names in the period immediately before July's downturn hit them hardest. The fund lost roughly $35 billion in assets after margin calls from prime brokers — Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase — forced a distressed sale of its publicly traded holdings to Ken Griffin's Citadel. Citadel acquired the leveraged positions, including SK Hynix and CoreWeave, at below-market prices. The fund had commanded roughly $45 billion at its July high point, but was left with around $10 billion once the Citadel deal closed. Situational Awareness had used as much as 400% leverage. From its launch in July 2024 through the end of June, the fund had posted returns exceeding 1,000%. In the weeks that followed the near-collapse, Leopold Aschenbrenner made a $400 million investment in an undisclosed private company, the first sign of his intentions to rebuild. In a letter to investors, he said the fund had taken the steps needed to survive and pledged to draw lessons from the experience.
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