This OpenAI Researcher-Turned-Hedge Fund Manager Is Long Intel and Short Nvidia, TSMC, and Broadcom. Is a Changing of the Guard on the Horizon?

1 week ago 10

Billy Duberstein, The Motley Fool

Sun, November 23, 2025 astatine 12:00 PM CST 7 min read

  • Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness money went "short" galore of the astir fashionable AI names past quarter.

  • The money maintained its large agelong presumption successful Intel, contempt the stock's 50% emergence successful the 3rd quarter.

  • The bets look to suggest either disruption from Intel's 18A node oregon a valuation call.

  • 10 stocks we similar amended than Nvidia ›

It's 13F season, the clip of the 4th erstwhile large hedge funds disclose their buys and sells from the anterior quarter.

With truthful overmuch uncertainty astir the longevity of the artificial quality (AI) boom, some to the upside and downside, investors are nary uncertainty searching for clues arsenic to what the alleged "smart money" is reasoning astir starring exertion companies.

While galore investors travel investing legends, specified arsenic Warren Buffett, Stan Druckenmiller, Bill Ackman, Phillipe Laffont, and others, funny investors should particularly travel 1 caller hedge money founded conscionable past year, tally by a 23-year-old erstwhile OpenAI researcher. Though this manager is simply a large believer successful the artificial quality roar -- oregon astatine slightest was antecedently -- his third-quarter trades whitethorn daze chap AI bulls.

Person pointing to a integer  banal  illustration  illuminated successful  blue.

Image source: Getty Images.

In 2024, then-22-year-old Leopold Aschenbrenner founded a caller hedge money called Situational Awareness. The word "situational awareness" originates from the AI world, wherever an AI exemplary becomes alert of its ain circumstances -- a imaginable information hazard overmuch similar the machine HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Some mightiness question pursuing the bets of a 23-year-old oregon however helium was capable to rise hundreds of millions of dollars to commencement a hedge fund. Then again, Aschenbrenner is nary mean 20-something. He graduated arsenic valedictorian from Columbia University astatine the property of 19, with a dual large successful economics and mathematics -- an property erstwhile astir of america were conscionable attending our archetypal frat enactment arsenic freshmen.

In 2023, helium joined OpenAI arsenic portion of the Superalignment squad tasked with cutting-edge probe pursuing artificial wide quality (AGI). Aschenbrenner was known to propulsion buttons astatine OpenAI and was fired successful 2024 implicit an allegation that helium leaked delicate accusation to 3rd parties. Aschenbrenner denied this, claiming that helium had shared hypothetical scenarios related to information and AGI with extracurricular parties arsenic portion of a brainstorming session, a benignant of enactment communal successful Silicon Valley. His Superalignment squad was aboriginal dissolved erstwhile different members, specified arsenic famed probe Ilya Sutskever, near to recovered their ain AI companies.


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