Ex-OpenAI Researcher’s $20 Billion Fund Seeks Capital After Bitcoin Miner Bet Backfires

A hedge fund that turned a bet on Bitcoin miners into one of the best-performing portfolios in the industry is now hunting for fresh cash after the same bet turned against it.

Situational Awareness, the fund founded in 2024 by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has approached investors and lenders for new capital following heavy losses tied to July’s artificial intelligence stock sell-off, according to reporting from the Financial Times. A regulatory filing from March showed the fund held roughly $1.11 billion spread across seven Bitcoin mining stocks, including IREN, Core Scientific, Riot Platforms and CleanSpark — companies that have increasingly repositioned their power and data center capacity toward AI computing rather than pure Bitcoin mining.

That AI-adjacent bet had worked spectacularly well for a while. The Wall Street Journal reported the fund managed around $20 billion in assets as of early June, and Aschenbrenner’s letter to investors reportedly noted a 439% gain after fees through June. But the Financial Times says leverage cut both ways: borrowing that amplified those gains on the way up did the same to losses once AI stocks collapsed during July’s broader market rout, hitting the miner stocks that had become intertwined with AI infrastructure sentiment.

Rather than retreating, Aschenbrenner reportedly framed the sell-off to investors as having created attractive new entry points — language that suggests the fund still believes in the underlying thesis of Bitcoin miners as AI infrastructure plays, even after the drawdown that’s now forcing it to raise outside capital to keep positions funded.

The episode is a pointed illustration of how tightly Bitcoin mining economics have become tied to AI infrastructure spending over the past year. When AI stocks were rallying, miners pivoting toward GPU hosting and data center leasing looked like the smartest trade in the sector. When that same trade reverses, the same companies — and the funds concentrated in them — absorb the fall just as fast.

It also raises a broader question for anyone tracking Bitcoin mining as a sector: how much of a miner’s stock price today reflects its actual hash rate and block rewards, versus its perceived option value as an AI data center in waiting? Aschenbrenner’s fund just got a very expensive answer.

Curious how Bitcoin mining economics actually work? Explore the Bitcoin Academy.