We discuss Leopold Aschenbrenner’s AI-focused portfolio, including his reported short on NVIDIA and large private investment in Anthropic. We also cover NVIDIA’s bond offering and the idea that the AI infrastructure trade is shifting toward power, networking, and data-center buildout rather than just chips. ------ 🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️ NEWSLETTER: https://limitlessft.substack.com/ FOLLOW ON X: https://x.com/LimitlessFT SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQ APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890 RSS FEED: https://limitlessft.substack.com/ ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Leopold’s AI Portfolio 1:24 NVIDIA Short Explained 3:43 Bond Deal Breakdown 7:35 Why He Rotated 9:19 Anthropic Surprise Stake 12:19 Next Infrastructure Wave 14:28 Picking the Winners 17:55 Optics and Fiber Edge 22:00 Bubble or Not? 23:25 Energy Is the Bet 24:47 Closing Thoughts ------ RESOURCES Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Updates From the #1 AI Investor: Leopold's NVIDIA & Anthropic Strategy

Limitless: An AI Podcast

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Limitless: An AI Podcast

## Participants

- **Leopold Aschenbrenner** (Situational Awareness)
- **Ejaz** (Bankless)

## Transcript

Leopold Aschenbrenner, that 24 year old guy who invests in AI, he's very clearly the best AI investor in the world. There is word on the street that his notional position in this fund is now over 20 billion dollars. And Ejaz, we were looking at one of your posts from about a month ago and it was 13. So the fund seems to be doubling basically every quarter. And we have some pretty serious and interesting updates on what Leopold has been investing in. You'll note that in the last episode, we covered his portfolio. He was actually short a company that a lot of people are familiar with, the largest one in the world.

NVIDIA. And nobody could figure out why. He had over nine billion dollars worth of shorts on the largest and hottest AI company in the world. Today, we have some news that might actually uncover the reason why. It comes in the form of a debt offering. NVIDIA is actually raising money, which doesn't seem to make sense on the surface. Why would a company as big as NVIDIA be raising what just closed as 25 billion dollars in cash when their margins in particular are so, so high? So on the episode today, we're going to talk about Leopold's portfolio, how he's doing so well, what he's looking at.

Looking forward to and what he's positioning himself to, to go next. But also, what's going on with NVIDIA? Yeah. So Leopold Aschenbrenner, for context, ex-open AI researcher, raised a fund about one and a half to two years ago. It was a small casual raise of 200 million dollars, I believe. And since then, since his last 13F filings, the fund is worth 13.7 billion dollars.

And so everyone obviously wanted to know what positions he was taking, what his thesis was, what was the next major trade. Now, it's important to understand up until a month ago, Leopold was extremely bullish about everything AI, particularly picks and shovels. So we're talking about the NVIDIAs, the GPU makers, all that kind of stuff. And then a month ago, it was revealed that he wasn't especially bullish on the semiconductor landscape. He was still bullish on things like memory and power, those kinds of bottleneck constraints.

And maybe he was bullish near clouds as well. But he wasn't bullish, the most valuable company in the world, NVIDIA. And we have a total of $9 billion worth of puts in NVIDIA, ASML and Oracle. So these are companies that are key to the infrastructure boom, which is what has been heralded as the best and most certain trade in AI. So people started getting concerned. They were like, is this the AI bubble popping? Like, we don't see any signs of this. NVIDIA is still selling so many GPUs.

What could be the problem? And since then, we've uncovered a few things. The major one being that NVIDIA just raised $25 billion in a bond offering from external capital. So what this means effectively is they'...

Updates From the #1 AI Investor: Leopold's NVIDIA & Anthropic Strategy

Transcript

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Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

Updates From the #1 AI Investor: Leopold's NVIDIA & Anthropic Strategy

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.