Forced Out of $5.6B in Sandisk, Leopold’s Bull Case Is Still Alive. Here’s How You Should Play It.

When a high-profile investor suddenly exits a stock, people immediately assume something is wrong with the company. In Sandisk’s (SNDK) case, the opposite appears to be true. A new regulatory filing shows that Situational Awareness — the AI-focused hedge fund run by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner — built a large position in Sandisk during the second quarter, making it one of the fund’s biggest holdings at more than $5.6 billion. Then an AI-based selloff hit in July, and the fund took heavy losses, forcing Situational Awareness to offload much of its public portfolio to Ken Griffin’s Citadel.

The forced selling helps explain part of the brutal July slide for Sandisk, as from late June to late July, SNDK stock's price essentially halved. But this says nothing about the company itself. The selling came from a fund unwinding under pressure, not from anything breaking inside Sandisk’s business. If anything, the fundamentals have become even stronger. Sandisk recently posted the best quarter in its history, with revenue up 372% from a year ago and record gross margins.