Author: DLNews
Compiled by Deep潮 TechFlow
DeepOcean Summary: At 24, fired from OpenAI, and managing a $5.5 billion hedge fund—Leopold Aschenbrenner has allocated nearly 20% of his portfolio to Bitcoin mining stocks. However, his rationale isn’t based on bullish sentiment toward Bitcoin’s price; instead, he recognizes that mining operators possess something AI companies are desperately seeking but cannot obtain: ready-made industrial-scale power infrastructure. As new data centers face wait times of three to five years for grid connection, access to the power grid by miners is becoming more valuable than Bitcoin itself.
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Leopold Aschenbrenner manages a $5.5 billion hedge fund.
This 24-year-old fund manager has nearly 20% of his portfolio allocated to bitcoin miners.
But his bet is on the infrastructure and grid access required for AI.
Bitcoin miners have just received a $1 billion vote of confidence from an unexpected source: a former OpenAI researcher.
Leopold Aschenbrenner, 24, was dismissed by OpenAI in 2024 over allegations of information leakage. Through his $1 billion hedge fund, Situational Awareness LP, he has established a series of positions in the Bitcoin mining sector.
According to the latest filings submitted to the SEC, Situational Awareness LP currently manages $5.5 billion, with approximately $1 billion invested in bitcoin miners.
Aschenbrenner’s billion-dollar bet is one of the largest institutional investments in Bitcoin miners in recent months. But analysts say the signal reveals that the industry’s true asset has never been Bitcoin—it’s electricity.
“The true value of miners has always lain in their energy infrastructure and grid access,” said Nishant Sharma, founder of mining and hashing consultancy Blocksbridge, to DL News. “In today’s market, the underlying energy infrastructure is often valued higher than the bitcoin it could produce.”
As AI companies compete for power capacity, well-known mining stocks have fallen to multi-year lows. Aschenbrenner, a former member of the FTX Future Fund’s charitable team, sees immense value in bitcoin companies that control gigawatt-scale industrial power.
And Aschenbrenner’s entry timing couldn’t have been better.
After the 2024 halving reduced the block reward by half, Bitcoin miners have continued to face financial pressure. A lack of on-chain activity has further worsened their situation, as it has led to a steady decline in transaction fee income.
Miners thus turned to AI—riding the wave of this trend—selling their Bitcoin and abandoning the business model they had built.
Shareholders of Bitcoin miners are now demanding they accelerate their transition to AI.
Aschenbrenner did not respond to the interview request.
Aschenbrenner’s portfolio shows significant positions in the Bitcoin mining sector.
Including Core Scientific, Iris Energy, Cipher Mining, Riot Platforms, and Hut 8, these Bitcoin miners heavily transitioning into AI total approximately $1 billion.
Essentially, he is targeting Bitcoin miners who have already taken substantial steps into the AI field.
Core Scientific has signed a 12-year contract with AI cloud provider CoreWeave, expected to generate $10 billion in revenue; IREN aims to achieve over $500 million in annualized AI cloud service revenue by early 2026; Riot has recently shifted its focus to AI and high-performance computing, signing a 10-year data center lease agreement with AMD.
The economic logic behind this shift is impossible to ignore. If this trend continues, AI托管 will generate predictable, stable revenue, while Bitcoin mining depends on volatile cryptocurrency prices and cutthroat competition.
"Aschenbrenner's bet makes sense," said Sharma.
Competing for electricity
AI faces a major problem: severe power shortages.
According to reports, training OpenAI’s GPT-4—one of the more popular large language models on the market—consumed over 12 megawatts, equivalent to the electricity usage of approximately 12,000 households.
Future models will likely require more.
Obtaining this electricity is extremely difficult. In the United States, connecting a new data center to the grid typically takes three to five years, due to a series of procedures including environmental reviews, grid interconnection studies, transmission upgrades, and local permitting.
These timelines are indefinitely far off. At this point, Bitcoin miners step in.
"Because the construction cycle for traditional data centers is so lengthy, the existing assets that miners already have with power supply capabilities are extremely valuable to an industry struggling to keep up with demand," said Sharma.