Leopold Aschenbrenner runs something called Situational Awareness. The name implies he knows what's happening. The options positions suggest he's betting on AMD, Bloom Energy, and Coreweave. Sources told CNBC's David Faber this matters.
Bloom Energy makes fuel cells. Coreweave rents GPUs to people who need to train models that will eventually replace the people renting the GPUs. AMD makes chips that get bought when Nvidia's chips cost too much. This is the AI trade distilled into its purest form: expensive bets on the infrastructure required to build the thing that makes the bets obsolete.
Aschenbrenner wrote a manifesto about artificial general intelligence last year. Now he's buying options on semiconductor companies. The through-line here is that if you believe machines will soon outthink humans, the correct move is to buy leveraged exposure to the machines' breakfast. Makes sense. Warren Buffett bought See's Candies. Aschenbrenner buys calls on electricity and math rocks.
The beauty of options is they let you lose money faster than shares. You get the same downside as shares but with an expiration date. It's like buying milk that's already expired but costs more because it comes in a fancier carton.
Retail traders will read this headline and think they've unlocked alpha. They'll open Robinhood. They'll search for AMD. They'll buy the same calls Aschenbrenner bought three weeks ago. They'll watch those calls expire worthless on Friday. Then they'll blame Jerome Powell for not understanding the AI revolution.
Aschenbrenner has situational awareness. Retail has situational subscription fees to CNBC Pro and a margin call they don't understand yet.
Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash
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