Situational Awareness Bet Billions on Sandisk Before Imploding. The Supercycle Is Far From Over for SNDK Stock.

Sandisk (SNDK) has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence-driven memory boom, and a newly disclosed multibillion-dollar bet from one of the market’s most aggressive AI investors has added another layer to the story. Situational Awareness, the hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, dramatically increased its exposure to SanDisk before the fund nearly collapsed during July’s violent selloff in AI-related stocks.

The disclosure is striking because Sandisk had become Situational Awareness’s largest holding just before the downturn. The fund had built its reputation on high-conviction bets on companies positioned at the forefront of the AI revolution, using leverage to magnify returns along the way. That strategy produced extraordinary gains while the AI trade was surging, but it worked just as powerfully in reverse when memory and semiconductor stocks tumbled, eventually forcing the fund to start liquidating positions to meet margin calls.