--- title: "Why AI Wunderkind Leopold Aschenbrenner Started Betting Against Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/286793821.md" description: "Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund has opened put options worth $8.5 billion against Nvidia and other chip companies just before earnings reports. The fund's 13F filing reveals significant positions against Nvidia, Oracle, and Broadcom, indicating a shift in focus from chipmakers to the power and capacity layer. Despite this, retail traders remain optimistic about Nvidia's future, with a strong consensus rating from analysts ahead of its earnings report." datetime: "2026-05-18T15:13:13.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/286793821.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286793821.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/286793821.md) --- # Why AI Wunderkind Leopold Aschenbrenner Started Betting Against Nvidia, Oracle, Broadcom **Leopold Aschenbrenner’s** Situational Awareness fund’s latest 13F filing shows it has opened put options representing roughly $8.5 billion in notional value against **Nvidia Corp.** (NASDAQ:NVDA) and the rest of the chip complex, just two days before Nvidia reports earnings. The 13F, filed Friday with the SEC, shows new put positions of $1.57 billion on Nvidia, $2.04 billion on the **VanEck Semiconductor ETF** (NASDAQ:SMH), $1.07 billion on **Oracle Corp.** (NYSE:ORCL), $1.01 billion on **Broadcom Inc.** (NASDAQ:AVGO) and $969 million on **Advanced Micro Devices Inc.** (NASDAQ:AMD). Other puts cover ASML, Taiwan Semi, Intel and Infosys. Combined, the notional value of these puts makes up over 60% of the fund’s total reported 13F value. ## The Bull Who Stopped Believing In Chips Aschenbrenner is the former OpenAI Superalignment researcher whose 165-page “Situational Awareness” essay argued AGI was closer than the market thought and turned him into an investor in the space. His fund quickly swelled past $1.5 billion in 2025 and grew its disclosed equity book to $5.5 billion by February 2026 on the back of that thesis. Now he has used it to short the company that made him famous. The filing seems to imply Aschenbrenner thinks the AI trade is moving downstream from the chipmakers to the power and capacity layer that feeds them. Fuel cell maker **Bloom Energy Corp.** (NYSE:BE) is the largest long position at $879 million, with a basket of Bitcoin miners filling out the long book, repurposed as AI hosting plays for their permitted gigawatts of grid capacity. The chip puts are the other side of the same trade. The chip puts aren’t uniform. On **Micron Technology Inc.** (NASDAQ:MU) and Taiwan Semi, the fund also bought calls worth $422 million and $355 million respectively, suggesting a bet on a move in memory and foundry specifically rather than a clean directional short. ## Prediction Markets Are Still Long Nvidia Retail traders on Polymarket are not pricing the same risk. Nvidia sits at 65% to finish 2026 as the world’s largest company by market cap, and the “AI bubble burst by end of 2026” contract trades at just 23%. One of the triggers for that contract is Nvidia falling 50% off its all-time high. Wall Street is aligned with the Polymarket consensus. NVDA holds a Strong Buy consensus rating from 40 of 42 analysts, with Cantor Fitzgerald, Bank of America and UBS all raising price targets ahead of earnings in the past week. Nvidia reports fiscal Q1 earnings Wednesday after the close. _Image: Shutterstock_ ### Related Stocks - [NVDA.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDA.US.md) - [ORCL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/ORCL.US.md) - [NVDQ.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDQ.US.md) - [NVD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVD.US.md) - [ORCX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/ORCX.US.md) - [NVDX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDX.US.md) - [NVDD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDD.US.md) - [NVDS.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVDS.US.md) - [SMH.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SMH.US.md) - [AVGO.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AVGO.US.md) - [AMD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/AMD.US.md) - [ASML.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/ASML.US.md) - [TSM.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/TSM.US.md) - [INTC.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/INTC.US.md) - [INFY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/INFY.US.md) - [BE.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BE.US.md) - [MU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MU.US.md) - [BAC.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC.US.md) - [UBS.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/UBS.US.md) - [NVD.DE](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/NVD.DE.md) - [ORCL-D.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/ORCL-D.US.md) - [BAC-Q.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-Q.US.md) - [BML-L.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BML-L.US.md) - [BAC-L.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-L.US.md) - [BAC-K.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-K.US.md) - [BML-H.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BML-H.US.md) - [BAC-N.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-N.US.md) - [BAC-E.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-E.US.md) - [MER-K.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MER-K.US.md) - [BAC-O.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-O.US.md) - [BML-G.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BML-G.US.md) - [BAC-M.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-M.US.md) - [BAC-B.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-B.US.md) - [BML-J.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BML-J.US.md) - [BAC-S.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-S.US.md) - [BAC-P.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/BAC-P.US.md) - [8648.JP](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/8648.JP.md) ## Related News & Research - [Analysts boost Nvidia outlook as AI demand surges ahead of earnings](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286687423.md) - [Nvidia’s AI Lead Is Back in Focus as Wolfe Research Doubles Down](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286680544.md) - [Nvidia Discloses Stakes in AI Stocks CoreWeave (CRWV) and Coherent (COHR)](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286630278.md) - [Cerebras (CBRS) IPO: Why It's Different from Nvidia, AMD](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286449201.md) - [Nvidia Will Report Q1 Earnings on May 20 — Options Traders Expect an 8.65% Move in NVDA Stock](https://longbridge.com/en/news/286763191.md)