Situational Awareness Hedge Fund Buys Options in AMD, Coreweave

Leopold Aschenbrenner's investment vehicle, Situational Awareness, has been quietly accumulating options positions in a cluster of companies closely tied to the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout, according to sources who spoke with CNBC's David Faber. The names involved — Advanced Micro Devices, Bloom Energy, and Coreweave — collectively tell a coherent story about where the fund sees opportunity in the AI supply chain.

Aschenbrenner is best known outside finance for his tenure at OpenAI and his independently published essay series also titled "Situational Awareness," which argued that artificial general intelligence could arrive sooner than mainstream forecasts suggest. His pivot into active fund management signals that he is now willing to put capital behind those convictions rather than simply articulating them in public.

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The specific equity choices are worth parsing. AMD is among the leading alternatives to Nvidia's dominant GPU lineup, making it a natural beneficiary if AI compute demand continues to broaden. Coreweave, the GPU cloud provider that completed a high-profile IPO in early 2025, is essentially a direct bet on sustained hyperscaler demand for rented compute. Bloom Energy, a fuel-cell power company, fits neatly into the thesis that AI data centers will strain the electrical grid and create durable demand for distributed, reliable power generation.

Options activity, as opposed to outright stock purchases, gives the fund the ability to express directional conviction while managing downside exposure — a structure that makes particular sense in a sector where valuations already price in significant growth. The use of derivatives also means the fund can maintain leverage without committing the full notional value of a position upfront, a common strategy among newer, more concentrated funds building an initial book.

The emergence of Situational Awareness as an active market participant is a notable data point for anyone tracking how AI researchers with strong macro views are translating those views into portfolio construction. Continue reading at CNBC.