Leopold Aschenbrenner, once part of FTX Future Fund, is now drawing attention for the pace of growth at his AI-focused investment firm. SEC 13F filings show that Situational Awareness LP reported $255 million in public holdings in Q4 2024, and that figure climbed to $5.5 billion by Q4 2025.
From FTX to OpenAI and then into investing
Aschenbrenner, 24, was born in Germany to two doctors. In 2021, he graduated first in his class from Columbia University with dual degrees in economics and mathematical statistics. During his time there, he also co-founded the university's Effective Altruism chapter.
In February 2022, he joined the FTX Future Fund, a philanthropic initiative created by the FTX Foundation to advance effective altruism. He remained there until the collapse of FTX in November 2022.
After leaving FTX, he moved to OpenAI in 2023 and joined the Superalignment team led by Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, which focused on controlling AI systems more capable than humans. In April 2024, OpenAI fired him over alleged information leaks. Aschenbrenner disputed that account, saying the issue centered on a brainstorming document he had shared with three outside researchers for feedback. He also said a memo he sent to OpenAI's board about security failures was the real reason for his dismissal, while OpenAI said the firing was unrelated to that memo. One month later, the Superalignment team was dissolved.
A 165-page paper became the basis for a fund
In June 2024, Aschenbrenner published Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead, a 165-page paper covering the path toward AGI, the transition from AGI to superintelligence, major risks facing humanity, and possible responses. The paper sparked heavy discussion across Silicon Valley and raised his profile.
He launched Situational Awareness LP in September 2024 and took the role of chief investment officer, targeting opportunities across the AI supply chain. The fund's initial size was not publicly disclosed. Reports from The Wall Street Journal and Fortune in mid-2025 said the firm had about $1.5 billion in assets under management at that time. Those reports listed LPs including Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and investor Daniel Gross.
Highly concentrated positions focused on AI infrastructure
Its 13F filing disclosed 29 main positions. The top 10 accounted for 86% of the portfolio, showing a concentrated strategy aimed less at AI applications and more at upstream infrastructure such as energy, compute, optical communications, and storage.
The fund's largest position was Bloom Energy, a company focused on solid oxide fuel cells and electrolyzer technology. The source article said demand from AI data centers helped the company's results beat expectations, and that its stock had risen more than 10x from late 2024. By contrast, names such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google did not appear in the disclosed holdings.
The only disclosed short position was an options trade against Indian software services exporter Infosys. The article linked that position to a view that products such as Claude Code and Codex could replace parts of the traditional IT outsourcing business.
Crypto-linked miners appear, but the thesis is AI
The portfolio still carries a visible link to crypto. Publicly disclosed holdings include Bitcoin mining-related companies such as Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, Iren, and Bitdeer.
Even so, the article said the fund was not targeting these companies for their direct crypto exposure. The focus was their shift toward AI compute infrastructure. Existing access to land, power, and computing capacity is giving some miners a path into AI data center buildouts. As AI demand rises and the crypto market stays weak by comparison, that repositioning is becoming more common.
A career path that still intersects with crypto
Aschenbrenner's background links FTX, OpenAI, and the current AI investment boom, which is part of why his story has drawn interest in crypto circles. The source notes that he once worked at FTX Future Fund, while FTX had also been an early major backer of Anthropic. His fiancee, Avital Balwit, is now Anthropic's chief of staff.
By the scale of its public holdings growth alone, Situational Awareness LP has become one of the most watched AI funds of the past year. The available filings point to one clear pattern: capital is being deployed aggressively into the infrastructure layer behind the AI buildout.