Số người lạc quan nhất về sự tăng tốc của AGI, trong quý 1 đã mua hàng tỷ USD quyền chọn bán danh nghĩa?

During this U.S. stock 13F filing season, one of the funds drawing the most market attention is neither Bridgewater nor Berkshire Hathaway, but a fund with a very distinctive name — Situational Awareness LP.

Its manager, Leopold Aschenbrenner, is not a traditional Wall Street veteran but a former member of the OpenAI Superalignment team. In 2024, he published a lengthy essay titled "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead", which presented a very radical core thesis, directly stating that AGI might arrive much sooner than most people imagine, and that the truly scarce resources in the future won't just be model capabilities themselves, but also computing power, electricity, data centers, chips, storage, and the national-level resource competition surrounding the AI arms race.

Two years later, it turns out he was right.

Leopold internalized a set of judgments about the next decade of AGI and then mapped these judgments onto the capital market. That's precisely why, from its inception, Situational Awareness doesn't look like an ordinary tech fund, but rather resembles a translation of the AGI roadmap directly into an AI infrastructure investment map.

This is also why, in the AI investment field, every move it makes draws significant market attention. The latest 13F filing reveals that this most AI-savvy bull seems to be quietly building a substantial position in put options.

1. SALP: A Fund That Turned the AGI Belief into a Product

Public information shows that Leopold founded an investment firm focused on AGI, backed by prominent Silicon Valley figures including Patrick Collison, John Collison, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross.

According to market reports, Situational Awareness delivered a net return of approximately +47% after fees in the first half of 2025, significantly outperforming the S&P 500 and tech hedge fund indices over the same period. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is not simply bullish on 'tech stocks,' but highly concentrated on AI infrastructure, betting on where AI capital expenditures will ultimately flow.

As mentioned at the beginning, its underlying logic is: if AGI truly accelerates, the assets first up for revaluation won't necessarily be application-layer companies, but rather those that control computing power, electricity, data centers, storage, optical communications, semiconductor equipment, and energy resources. Therefore, its high returns don't rely on simply buying an index, but on leveraging a selection of high-beta AI infrastructure names like Bloom Energy, Sandisk, Lumentum, CoreWeave, and Core Scientific.

A quick explanation of what a 13F is might be helpful here.

A 13F is a quarterly filing submitted to the SEC by institutional investment managers, usually used to observe quarterly changes in the holdings of large funds in U.S. stocks, ETFs, and related options. However, it is essentially just a snapshot at the end of the quarter, telling the market "what was disclosed at a specific point in time." It cannot fully reconstruct a fund's entire trading strategy, especially regarding options. The 13F doesn't show strike prices, expiration dates, or how positions might be paired with others, and it certainly doesn't allow for a direct derivation of the fund's true net exposure.

This is the most common point of misinterpretation when analyzing this document.

The reporting date for this Q1 13F was March 31st. Last10K shows the filing was submitted on the evening of May 15th Eastern Time, but the SEC acceptance time was May 18th. This means it wasn't simply a case of "not filing." There's a time lag between the submission and the market actually seeing the disclosed results, which led to many discussions on social platforms like "waiting for Leopold's 13F."

More importantly, the disclosed results of this 13F weren't entirely what the market expected. Many people assumed Leopold would continue heavily increasing positions in AI core assets like Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, TSMC, and ASML. However, the reality is that SALP established a large number of new PUT option positions covering a range of AI and semiconductor core names, including the SMH semiconductor ETF, Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom, AMD, Micron, TSMC, ASML, and Intel.

This has led the market to reconsider a key question: Why is the person most convinced of AGI's accelerating arrival starting to buy insurance on AI leaders?

Simply attributing it to "being bearish on AI" is too crude. What's truly worth analyzing is the macroeconomic backdrop against which he made this move and what it reveals about the changing structure of AI trading.

2. Deciphering SALP's Latest 13F: From Betting on AI to Managing AI Volatility

The most striking move revealed in this 13F is undoubtedly SALP establishing substantial new put option positions:

• The largest is the SMH Semiconductor ETF PUT, with a disclosed value of approximately $2.043 billion;
• Followed by the NVDA PUT, approximately $1.568 billion;
• Then the ORCL PUT, approximately $1.073 billion;
• The AVGO PUT, approximately $1.006 billion;
• And the AMD PUT, approximately $969 million;
• Additionally, it also established new positions in MU PUT, TSM PUT, ASML PUT, INTC PUT, among others;

On the surface, this strongly resembles a bearish bet on AI leaders. However, the problem is that a PUT doesn't necessarily represent a one-sided short position — after all, the option amounts in a 13F are mostly notional values disclosed based on the size of the underlying securities, not the actual premium cost incurred by the fund. More importantly, the 13F doesn't reveal strike prices, expiration dates, whether they are paired with other positions, or the portfolio's true net exposure.

Therefore, claiming Leopold is "completely bearish on Nvidia and semiconductors" is not rigorous. A more reasonable interpretation is that he is buying 'insurance' for his long AI infrastructure portfolio. Many of SALP's original holdings are themselves high-beta, high-volatility companies sensitive to interest rates, such as Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, Core Scientific, IREN, Applied Digital, and Sandisk. Their long-term logic is tied to AI infrastructure, but their short-term stock prices are heavily dependent on risk appetite and valuation environment.

If the market starts de-risking due to rising oil prices, persistent inflation, higher interest rates, or geopolitical conflicts, these high-beta assets are often the first to be sold. This aligns with the macro backdrop in late March: on one hand, tensions in the Middle East and the risk of US-Iran conflict pushed up oil price expectations; on the other hand, higher oil prices can exacerbate inflation stickiness, reducing market confidence in interest rate cuts.

For high-valuation growth stocks, this constitutes a "double pressure": oil pushes up inflation, inflation suppresses rate cuts, interest rates remain elevated, and the valuations of long-duration tech assets face compression.

Viewed against this backdrop, Leopold's move to establish numerous PUT positions becomes easier to understand. It isn't a negation of AI, but an acknowledgment that no matter how strong the long-term AI logic is, it cannot completely ignore macro headwinds.

Especially for a fund like SALP, which holds many high-beta assets. If it only holds offensive positions, a systemic market downturn could cause significant portfolio volatility. By buying PUTs on highly liquid and representative AI core assets like SMH, NVDA, AVGO, AMD, and ORCL, it can use relatively standardized tools to hedge against systemic downside risk across the AI trade.

The real implication here is that Leopold hasn't transformed from an AI bull into an AI bear. Instead, he has shifted from 'unilaterally aggressive long AI' to 'continuing to bet on AI infrastructure, but beginning to manage path volatility.'

This represents a more mature portfolio management approach.

3. So, Where is Leopold's Offensive Focus?

If the newly established PUTs address the "defensive question," then the lists of increases, decreases, and complete liquidations truly reveal where Leopold's offensive focus lies.

According to the filing, SALP retained and increased positions in several AI infrastructure-related names. For example, Sandisk common stock was slightly increased, and others like CoreWeave common stock, IREN, Applied Digital, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Bitfarms, and Bitdeer were also on the list of increases. The key long positions retained also include Bloom Energy, Sandisk, CoreWeave, IREN, Core Scientific, and Applied Digital.

This indicates he hasn't abandoned AI. On the contrary, he continues betting on the same long-term logic: AI capital expenditures will continue to flow downstream, and the real beneficiaries are those companies that control electricity, data centers, storage, computing capacity, and infrastructure bottlenecks.

This is very close to the core thesis of MSX's Q2 outlook. In our article "AI Infrastructure Surged Throughout Q1; Into Q2, Who Can Sustain 'High Valuations'?", we emphasized that the trading focus in AI has shifted from pure GPUs to networks, storage, and electricity. The market now cares more about where the continually expanding CapEx of tech giants ultimately ends up — in whose orders, revenue, and profits. Sectors like equipment, networking, storage, and power are more advantageous not because they are sexier, but because they better align with the market's current preference for deliverability.

From this perspective, SALP's long positions are quite representative: Bloom Energy corresponds to electricity and independent energy supply; CoreWeave, Applied Digital, Core Scientific, and IREN correspond to data centers, computing power hosting, and infrastructure support; positions related to Sandisk, Micron, and TSM correspond to storage, semiconductor manufacturing, and hardware supply.

In other words, Leopold hasn't stopped buying AI; he's more focused on where the AI money ultimately gets spent and who can convert that spending into revenue on their financial statements.

Looking at the reductions and liquidations is equally informative. SALP completely liquidated INTC CALL, Lumentum, and Cipher Mining, and reduced positions like CoreWeave CALL, Bloom Energy, and Core Scientific. The most notable aspect here is that he isn't simply exiting a specific direction but reducing exposure in positions that have appreciated significantly, carry higher volatility, or have stronger leverage attributes.

For instance, with CoreWeave, he reduced CALLs but still holds common stock. This suggests he hasn't completely given up on CoreWeave, but has shifted from a more aggressive options expression back to a relatively more manageable common stock position. Similarly, reducing Bloom Energy and Core Scientific doesn't necessarily mean the thesis is invalid; it's more likely about portfolio-level risk management and profit-taking.

The complete liquidation of Lumentum is more intriguing. In our MSX Q1 review, AI hardware and optical communications were the two strongest themes. Names like AXTI, AAOI, LITE, and LWLG saw double-digit percentage gains. The strength of optical communications fundamentally stems from the explosive demand for optical interconnects, optical modules, and network links driven by AI data centers. However, the problem is that the harder a theme runs in Q1, the more likely it faces crowded trades and deteriorating risk-reward ratios entering Q2.

So, Leopold selling off LITE and reducing some high-beta AI infrastructure positions doesn't necessarily mean he is bearish on the sector. It may be a more realistic acknowledgment: the most successful trades of Q1 aren't necessarily the best risk-reward trades of Q2.

This is the most important aspect of this portfolio adjustment. It's not a denial of AI, but a proactive structural shift. He is moving from buying anything on the AI value chain to focusing only on assets better positioned to absorb long-term capital expenditures, possessing stronger infrastructure characteristics, and more capable of navigating macroeconomic volatility.

What he is abandoning is not AI, but the linear fantasy that "all AI stocks will rise together."

This 13F is essentially just a snapshot as of March 31st. It doesn't mean Leopold still holds exactly the same positions in May. However, it still offers powerful insights for the current market environment.

First, the long-term AI narrative hasn't ended, but the trading structure has changed. The future won't see all AI stocks rising. Instead, it's about who can deliver results, who commands a premium, which areas are overcrowded, and which require hedging.

Second, in a high-oil-price, high-interest-rate, high-volatility environment, an effective strategy isn't simple all-out offense or full defense, but rather playing offense with a defense — committing core positions to certainty, marginal positions to beta, while using hedging tools to control portfolio drawdowns. Leopold's recent moves essentially demonstrate this logic using real portfolio allocations.

Third, this confirms a major shift in the U.S. stock market for 2026: Beta from indices is weakening, while Alpha from stock selection is strengthening. In the past, just buying the Magnificent Seven or Nvidia might have been enough to win. But now the market is more discerning. It will ask every company: Can your AI story ultimately translate into orders? Can it turn into revenue? Can it become profit? If not, no matter how high the valuation, it will be compressed.

This is also why AI Infrastructure 2.0 becomes important. Future capital flows won't just look at GPUs; they will move down the chain from compute → interconnect → storage → power → data center infrastructure to find the links that can truly deliver.

Final Thoughts

If you only look at the surface of this 13F, the most eye-catching element is that string of massive PUTs.

But if you truly review the entire portfolio, you'll realize Leopold isn't "turning from an AI bull into a bear." Instead, he has executed a more mature upgrade: long-term, still betting on AI infrastructure; short-term, beginning to squarely acknowledge the volatility risks of high-valuation, high-beta assets.

This is the most important takeaway from this 13F. It tells us that the direction of AI might still be correct, but the path to that direction will certainly not be a straight line.

For a true fund manager, the important thing is never just to bet on the right destination, but also to survive the volatility and navigate the journey along the way.

And for ordinary investors, the biggest insight from this 13F is clear: The AI trade in 2026 has shifted from "buying the story" to "buying the delivery"; from "buying the leaders" to "finding the bottlenecks"; and from "unilateral offense" to "playing offense with a defense."

This is the most interesting signal, and one that absolutely should not be ignored.