AI investor Leopold Aschenbrenner invests $500 million in chip startup Source Foundry

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AI and crypto news broke on August 8 when 25-year-old investor Leopold Aschenbrenner, former OpenAI researcher, invested $400 million in chip startup Source Foundry, bringing his total stake to $500 million. Founded in 2025 by Abdulmalik Obaid and Joe Burg, Source Foundry is developing more affordable and faster lithography tools to compete with ASML. On-chain data reveals rising interest in AI infrastructure as demand for computing power increases.
ME AI update: On August 8, 25-year-old Wall Street rising AI investing star and former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner has returned to the investment scene, committing $400 million to a private company backed by Sequoia Capital. The latest disclosure reveals the private company as Source Foundry, a chip manufacturing startup. The fund had previously invested $100 million in Source Foundry; with this additional $400 million, its total investment now reaches $500 million. This investment, completed on Tuesday, marks Leopold’s first major move to recover after his Situational Awareness fund nearly collapsed last week amid a wave of margin calls from multiple Wall Street lenders. Source Foundry is a secretive chip manufacturing startup founded in San Francisco in 2025 by Stanford materials scientist Abdulmalik Obaid (CEO) and Joe Burg. The company focuses on developing simpler, lower-cost, and faster semiconductor lithography and manufacturing processes and tools, aiming to challenge ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines and bridge the massive gap between the exponential growth in AI computing demand and the linear expansion of traditional chip production capacity—thereby reshaping the production of advanced AI chips. (Source: MLion)
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