Leopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI researcher whose AI-focused fund posted blockbuster 2025 returns, used his Q1 2026 13F to do something counterintuitive: stack roughly $8.5 billion of
Leopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI researcher whose AI-focused fund posted blockbuster 2025 returns, used his Q1 2026 13F to do something counterintuitive: stack roughly $8.5 billion of put options against Nvidia while piling into Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI, including a new position in HIVE Digital Technologies.
Frank Holmes is Executive Chairman of HIVE Digital Technologies, the first Bitcoin miner to go public all the way back in 2017, and CEO of asset manager U.S. Global Investors.
HIVE runs data centers across Canada, Sweden and Paraguay and is shifting from roughly 90% Bitcoin revenue to include high-performance computing (HPC) for AI. Holmes joined TheStreet Roundtable to discuss why Aschenbrenner is adding HIVE while shorting other major players.
Related: Coinbase's D'Agostino reveals the plan to put all of finance on one app
He argues Aschenbrenner is playing a valuation mean-reversion, betting the AI premium shifts from the expensive chipmakers to the cheaper power and infrastructure layer that feeds them.
The 13F disclosed about $8.5 billion in Nvidia puts, plus bearish positions tied to Broadcom, Oracle, AMD and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM).
The same filing roughly doubled the fund to $13.68 billion and loaded up on miners moving into AI hosting, including HIVE, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, IREN, Bitdeer, Applied Digital, Core Scientific and Keel.
"He saw early enough that GPU chips are not going to be like Bitcoin ASIC chips. Bitcoin ASIC chips have a four-year life ... GPU chips are different, they have a seven-year life,” Holmes said.
Holmes's core explanation is a valuation gap between two miners.
“Selling a Hut 8 and buying Hive, that's a simple arbitration of one trading at 40 times revenue, one trading at four times revenue. There's going to be mean reversion,” Holmes explained. “When you look at an industry like the airline industry, people like to go long American Airlines if oil prices are falling. They're playing a mean reversion, and I think that's very astute of what he's doing."
HIVE's is already generating revenue through it’s AI focused subsidiary, BUZZ AI. It reported $19.5 million in FY 2026, a 94% increase year-over-year. They are targeting about $500 million in Bitcoin mining and $100 million in HPC long-term.
The unifying thesis is that AI’s bottleneck is physical. Power, land to build, and raw materials like copper are all finite.
"A gigawatt of electricity for HPC is going to consume not 50,000 pounds, but 50,000 tons of copper. Now you're looking at copper prices making an all-time high,” Holmes said.
Holmes also pointed to the unprecedented influence that President Trump has on capital markets as a swing factor, as well as crediting Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney for the pro-AI pivot there. Carney’s government recently launched a national AI strategy and appointed a dedicated AI minister.
Aschenbrenner is shorting AI chips even as "Big Short" investor Michael Burry runs large bearish bets on Nvidia and Palantir, but Holmes frames Aschenbrenner as longer-term bullish on the build-out, not calling a crash.
"I don't think he's short (because) Nvidia is going to collapse tomorrow, but it could be a short-term trade,” Holmes said.
Aschenbrenner’s positions indicate that he believes the AI premium may rotate from chipmakers to the power, real estate and materials AI needs, and that some Bitcoin miners are a cheap way to own that infrastructure.
