SBF's little brother turned 225 million into 5.5 billion in one year

Original | Odaily Planet Daily Azuma

Have you heard of Leopold Aschenbrenner?

He is one of the hottest names in the current AI investment circle ------ At just 24 years old, the Situational Awareness LP fund he founded has a publicly disclosed position size of "only" $225 million in Q4 2024, but this number has skyrocketed to $5.5 billion in the recently disclosed holdings for Q4 2025.

What is less known is that Leopold Aschenbrenner was once part of the crypto world ------ he worked on the FTX Future Fund team until FTX's bankruptcy.

A Genius from a Family of Doctors

Leopold Aschenbrenner was born in Germany, with both parents being doctors.

In 2021, 19-year-old Leopold Aschenbrenner graduated from Columbia University with the highest honors, earning dual degrees in Economics and Mathematical Statistics. During his time at Columbia, he co-founded the university's chapter of "Effective Altruism" (EA).

"Effective Altruism" was a principle frequently mentioned by FTX founder SBF. Perhaps due to shared beliefs, Leopold Aschenbrenner joined the FTX Future Fund team in February 2022, a charitable initiative created by the FTX Foundation aimed at promoting effective altruism, and he worked there until just before FTX's collapse in November 2022.

In 2023, after leaving FTX, Leopold Aschenbrenner joined OpenAI, which has now become a leading AI company, entering the Superalignment team led by experts Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, which is dedicated to technological breakthroughs to guide and control AI systems that are more intelligent than humans.

In April 2023, OpenAI's internal communication system was hacked, but the company did not publicly disclose this. Leopold Aschenbrenner subsequently submitted a memo to the OpenAI board, arguing that OpenAI's security measures were insufficient. He later stated that this memo led to disagreements between the board and management regarding security issues, and he received a warning from the HR department.

In April 2024, OpenAI fired Leopold Aschenbrenner on the grounds of alleged information leakage, but he countered that the so-called "leak" referred to him sharing a "brainstorming" document with three external researchers solely for feedback. OpenAI claimed that the dismissal was unrelated to the security memo submitted by Leopold Aschenbrenner, while he asserted that he was explicitly told at the time that the memo was the main reason for his dismissal. Just one month later, the Superalignment team was disbanded, and other prominent AI researchers, including Ilya Sutskever, also left OpenAI.

Interestingly, the conflict between Leopold Aschenbrenner and OpenAI does not end there; his fiancée Avital Balwit is now the chief of staff at Anthropic, OpenAI's biggest competitor... and FTX was also one of Anthropic's early major investors.

Leaving the Tech Frontline for the Investment Circle

In June 2024, just two months after leaving OpenAI, Leopold Aschenbrenner wrote a 165-page super paper titled "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead." This paper contains multiple chapters predicting the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), envisioning the path from AGI to superintelligence, describing four major risks faced by humanity, outlining how humanity should respond to superintelligence, and articulating the principles of "AGI realism."

The paper "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead" sparked significant discussion in Silicon Valley, and Leopold Aschenbrenner gained considerable fame as a result. Subsequently, in September 2024, he founded the eponymous fund Situational Awareness LP and became its Chief Investment Officer, focusing on investment opportunities in the AI industry chain.

The initial fund size of Situational Awareness LP has not been publicly disclosed, but according to reports from mainstream media such as WSJ and Fortune in mid-2025, the fund's total assets under management at that time were approximately $1.5 billion, with LPs including Patrick Collison and John Collison, co-founders of Stripe, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and well-known investor Daniel Gross.

According to the 13F filings disclosed by Situational Awareness LP (quarterly disclosure documents required by the SEC for funds with assets under management exceeding $100 million), in Q4 2024, the total value of Situational Awareness LP's publicly disclosed positions was "only" $255 million, but in the recently disclosed holdings for Q4 2025 on February 16 of this year, that number had grown to an astonishing $5.5 billion.

Considering that Situational Awareness LP was founded not long before Q4 2024, the fund likely has some additional reserves beyond the $255 million disclosed positions. Even starting from a total asset management figure of around $1.5 billion in mid-2025, the disclosed positions had already increased to $5.5 billion by Q4 of the same year, which is an impressive speed.

Position Analysis: Shadows of the Crypto World

Situational Awareness LP disclosed the main 29 positions of the fund in its 13F filing, details of which can be seen in the image below.

As shown in the image, Situational Awareness LP's bets on AI are not concentrated on the more publicly favored application side, but rather focus on the upstream infrastructure industry chain.

• The top ten holdings of Situational Awareness LP account for as much as 86%, indicating a highly concentrated strategy, primarily investing in areas such as energy, computing power, optical communication, and storage.
• The largest position, Bloom Energy, focuses on the research and development of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) and electrolyzers (SOEC). Due to the growing demand from AI data centers, the company's performance has consistently exceeded expectations, with its stock price rising more than tenfold since the end of 2024.
• Hot stocks like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google do not appear in the holdings, suggesting that Situational Awareness LP prefers relatively "less popular" targets.
• The only short position disclosed by Situational Awareness LP is a short on Indian software service exporter Infosys in the form of options, seemingly betting that the development of Claude Code and Codex will replace traditional IT outsourcing work.

Another clue somewhat related to the crypto world is that the holdings of Situational Awareness LP include several Bitcoin mining companies, such as Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, Iren (formerly Iris Energy), and Bitdeer, owned by Jihan Wu.

However, it is unfortunate that what Situational Awareness LP is focused on is clearly not these companies' direct involvement in cryptocurrency, but rather betting on the transformation of mining companies into AI computing power centers ------ In an environment where the AI trend is booming and the crypto market is sluggish, more and more mining companies are actively seeking change by leveraging their existing advantages in land, computing power, and electricity. Here’s a preview: we will have another article on this trend soon.

A Fork in the Road of Destiny, a Reconstruction of Belief

Looking back at Leopold Aschenbrenner's career, it is hard not to think of another similarly haloed young genius, SBF ------ both worked at FTX, both firmly believed in effective altruism, and both achieved remarkable results in investment. But after one misstep, SBF has become a prisoner, facing a long prison sentence ahead; on the other hand, Leopold Aschenbrenner's life took a different fork after the overnight collapse of FTX, but fortunately, this seems to be a path more suited to him.

Time does not turn back, and fate never gives people a chance to restart. Some are forever left in the ruins of the old era, while others are forced to leave their original tracks but unveil entirely new stories.

As a part of the crypto industry, what comes to my mind now is ------ the industry is at its most shaky moment of confidence since its inception, some are leaving in disappointment, some are hesitating and observing, but others are actively embracing new technological waves and narrative shifts. History is often like this; when old stories collapse, it is often the moment of birth for new stories. The reconstruction of belief is, after all, another opportunity.