Former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, through his hedge fund Situational Awareness, is placing aggressive bullish bets on AI infrastructure companies including AMD, Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, SK Hynix, and SanDisk. These trades, involving the purchase of call options, were executed in late January 2026 following a volatile period where approximately $35 billion was wiped from AI-related market valuations. The move suggests a high-conviction recovery play from one of the most prominent figures in the AI-investment landscape.
Aschenbrenner’s return to these positions marks a significant pivot for the researcher-turned-investor, whose fund faced substantial pressure during the recent market downturn. The inclusion of CoreWeave is particularly notable for the crypto-intelligence community; as a leader in specialized cloud provider services, CoreWeave operates at the critical intersection of high-performance computing and blockchain infrastructure, often serving as the backbone for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN).
The timing of these call options indicates a belief that the recent "AI winter" fears were overstated and that the foundational hardware and energy layers—represented by firms like SK Hynix (high-bandwidth memory) and Bloom Energy (power generation)—remain undervalued. For US-based crypto investors, this signals that institutional appetite for the "AI-plus-Compute" trade remains robust despite the high volatility seen in both traditional equity and digital asset markets earlier this month.
Moving forward, market participants should watch the performance of these specific stocks as a bellwether for AI-themed digital assets and decentralized compute protocols. The success of Aschenbrenner’s "Situational Awareness" trades may dictate the flow of venture capital into the AI-crypto crossover sector throughout the first half of 2026, as the relationship between global silicon availability and on-chain compute resources becomes increasingly tight.