The former OpenAI researcher’s AI fund has been adding exposure to SanDisk since the third quarter of last year, and that stake is now worth $2.4 billion.
- Situational Awareness acquired 115,000 SanDisk shares at around $100 per share in Q3 2025.
- The fund expanded the holding to 1.14 million shares as of the end of March this year.
- SanDisk stock has climbed 788% year to date, with retail traders being bullish on it.
SanDisk Corp.’s shares have surged dramatically over the past year, and one person appears to have made a killing.
Situational Awareness, the hedge fund founded by 25-year-old former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner that has come to be known for its AI bets, first took a stake in SanDisk in the third quarter of last year.
At the time, Aschenbrenner acquired 115,000 SanDisk shares at around $100, just as its explosive rally was taking shape.
By the end of March this year, he increased his holding to 1.14 million shares. With SanDisk stock hitting a fresh high of $2,107.86 on Monday, that stake is now worth $2.4 billion.
For perspective, SNDK’s stock has rocketed nearly 4,860% in the past year. So an investor would have needed to put in just over $20,000 a year ago to be sitting on $1 million worth of SNDK today.
SanDisk was Situational Awareness’s sixth-largest holding by value as of March. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), Nvidia, and Oracle were the top three in that order.
Last month, the fund disclosed a major 5.6% stake in Nebius. The Nvidia-backed company is among a crop of new neocloud firms that have attracted significant investor attention recently.
Aschenbrenner is a former OpenAI Superalignment researcher and AI investor who became popular in 2024 after publishing “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead,” a widely discussed essay predicting that AGI could arrive by around 2027 and trigger massive economic and geopolitical disruption.
He launched Situational Awareness LP in 2024, with the fund set up around the thesis that rapid advances in AI will drive explosive demand for chips, data centers, electricity, and compute infrastructure.
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment for SNDK was ‘bullish’ as of early Tuesday. The stock has run 788% year-to-date amid a memory supercycle driven by incredible demand for chips and components from AI data centers.
More than three-quarters of nearly 1,000 users who voted in a Stocktwits poll said they remain bullish on the memory-chip sector and expect the rally to have further room to run.
SanDisk was earlier a unit of Western Digital and began trading as an independent company in February last year.
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