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Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund sold roughly 35% of its Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) position in the first quarter of 2026, cutting its stake from 10.1 million shares to about 6.5 million, according to SEC 13F filings. The fund reportedly built the position at an average cost under $90 a share. Bloom traded above $350 at its 2026 peak.
Read that again, because it’s the part every article about the “24-year-old genius who called the AI power trade” conveniently skips.
While retail investors are chasing BE after a 1,400% one-year run, the man who made the trade famous has been booking profits. And he’s not the only one heading for the exit while the crowd files in.
Key takeaways:
- Aschenbrenner’s fund trimmed its Bloom Energy stake ~35% in Q1 2026 — a $1 billion-plus profit-taking move on its single largest position
- Bloom insiders have been net sellers of roughly $83 million in stock over the past 12 months
- The AI power thesis behind the trade remains intact: Bloom holds a ~$20 billion backlog in a $5.5 trillion electricity market
- Three stocks — EQT, Williams, and GE Vernova — offer exposure to the same thesis at a fraction of Bloom’s 30x sales multiple
I spent 28 years trading professionally — as a market maker on the CBOE floor and a trader at the CME — and I’ve read 13F filings the way most people read box scores. Here’s what this one actually says, why it doesn’t mean what the doom-scrollers think it means, and where the money is moving next.
Follow the money. Let’s go.
Who Is Leopold Aschenbrenner — and Why His Trades Move Markets
If you’re just discovering this story, here’s the two-minute version.
Aschenbrenner is a former OpenAI safety researcher who was let go in 2024. Instead of fading into consulting, he published a 165-page essay called Situational Awareness arguing that artificial general intelligence was coming faster than markets believed — and that the binding constraint on AI wouldn’t be models or chips.
It would be electricity. His projection: AI could consume 100 gigawatts of power by 2030, and the existing grid cannot deliver it. Whoever controls the power that feeds the models wins.
Then he did something essay writers don’t do. He raised roughly $225 million and launched a hedge fund to trade his own thesis. That fund now manages billions, and when its quarterly filings drop, stocks move. When the fund’s Nebius stake was disclosed in May, the stock surged on the news alone. That’s why “Aschenbrenner portfolio” is one of the hottest search terms in finance right now.
His signature trade: while Wall Street crowded into chipmakers, Aschenbrenner bought megawatts.
Did Leopold Aschenbrenner Sell Bloom Energy Stock? Here’s the Filing Data
The numbers, straight from the 13F record:
| Filing period | BE shares held | Position detail |
| Q4 2025 | 10.1 million | ~$875 million value, plus 408,500 call options |
| Q1 2026 | ~6.5 million | Down ~35% from prior quarter |
Trackers put the fund’s average cost basis under $90 a share. At Bloom’s 2026 high above $351, the original position had roughly quadrupled. At its peak, the remaining stake was worth about $2.2 billion.
So, he sold a third of it. Into strength. After a 200%-plus gain on his fund’s largest, highest-conviction holding.
Now — before anyone spins this as “Aschenbrenner turns bearish on Bloom,” let me tell you what a floor trader sees in that filing.
A 13F is a rearview mirror. It shows quarter-end positions, filed weeks later. He may have bought some back. He may have sold more. Nobody outside the fund knows today’s book.
What we know for certain is this: a disciplined trader who bought under $90 took massive profits into a parabolic move — and kept millions of shares for the ride. That’s not a bearish call. That’s risk management. It’s what professionals do reflexively and what retail almost never does. On the floor, we had a saying for traders who never booked a gain: they’re not investors, they’re collectors. Collectors eventually donate their collections back to the market.
But the trim isn’t happening in a vacuum. That’s where it gets interesting.
Why the Smart Money Is Taking Profits on BE
Three more data points, same direction:
Insiders are selling. Bloom executives and directors have been net sellers of roughly $83 million in stock over the past twelve months, with fresh intent-to-sell filings hitting in recent weeks. The people who know this company best are trimming alongside Aschenbrenner.
The valuation is priced for perfection. BE trades around 30 times sales and north of 100 times forward earnings. Wall Street’s own targets tell the story — even after Evercore and UBS raised targets to $350, firms like Clear Street, Roth, and Barclays sit at Hold or Neutral in the $270–$290 zone. Translation: the stock has already pulled forward years of flawless execution.
The tape is violent. BE dropped 18% in a single session on June 26. It ripped 11% higher on July 6 when Brookfield expanded its financing framework for Bloom-powered AI projects from $5 billion to $25 billion. One recent session spanned $257 to $307 — a 19% intraday range. With a beta over 3, this trades like a leveraged AI index, not a power company.
None of this means Bloom is a bad business. It means the easy money in the stock has been made — by someone else, at prices you will never see again.
The question worth asking isn’t “Should I copy a trade that already happened?” It’s “What does the thesis say to buy now?”
The AI Power Thesis Is Bigger Than One Stock
Here’s why I’m not writing Bloom’s obituary — and why Aschenbrenner kept 6.5 million shares.
Bloom’s founder and CEO, KR Sridhar, is a former NASA scientist who worked on Mars missions before spending 25 years building this company for exactly this moment. In a recent long-form interview, he laid out numbers that should recalibrate how you think about the whole trade.
Electricity is a $5.5 trillion global market. Bloom’s revenue last year was about $2 billion. Even after a 1,400% run in the stock, the company has captured a rounding error of its addressable market.
The backlog says demand isn’t the constraint — capacity is. Bloom sits on roughly $20 billion in orders against manufacturing capacity of about one gigawatt today, headed above two gigawatts by year-end. Sridhar describes AI as putting “a hockey stick on a hockey stick” — an acceleration stacked on top of a digital revolution already underway.
The business model is speed. When a data center operator asks the utility for two gigawatts, they’re quoted years. Bloom’s fuel cells arrive in months. The company delivered 50-plus megawatts to an Oracle data center in Utah in 55 days against a 90-day contract when the site’s power hookup got delayed. Oracle has since expanded to a 2.8-gigawatt master agreement. Bloom was named exclusive power provider for the Project Jupiter AI cluster — up to 2.45 gigawatts. Nebius signed for 328 megawatts. Brookfield just put a $25 billion financing framework behind the whole build-out.
First-quarter revenue grew 130% year-over-year to $751 million. Full-year guidance was raised to $3.4–$3.8 billion. The company is profitable.
This is a real business hitting escape velocity. The problem was never the company. The problem is what you’re asked to pay for it today — after the informed money already got paid.
Stocks Like Bloom Energy: 3 Ways to Play the Next Layer
This is my signature move, and it’s the reason to read this instead of another “Is BE a buy?” recap.
When a trade gets crowded, don’t chase the name everybody found. Find the layer nobody is watching. Get there before the headlines.
In that same interview, Sridhar named the three bottlenecks constraining Bloom’s growth: the customer’s construction timeline, permitting, and gas supply. Pay attention — a CEO’s bottleneck list is a shopping list.
The molecule: EQT Corp. (NYSE: EQT). Bloom’s fuel cells run on natural gas. Every gigawatt Bloom deploys creates new, permanent gas demand sitting behind the meter at a data center — demand that doesn’t flinch at a warm winter. EQT is the largest natural gas producer in the United States, sitting on the Appalachian basin that feeds the data center corridor. Every Bloom box that ships is a small, permanent bid under EQT’s product.
The pipe: Williams Companies (NYSE: WMB). A fuel cell without gas supply is an expensive sculpture. Williams moves roughly a third of America’s natural gas, and its Transco system is the superhighway serving the exact mid-Atlantic and Southeast markets where hyperscale data centers are breaking ground. “Behind the meter” doesn’t bypass the pipeline — it makes the pipeline the whole ballgame. You collect a toll on the thesis, with a dividend while you wait.
The shortage: GE Vernova (NYSE: GEV). Ask yourself why Bloom exists as an AI trade at all. Because gas turbines are sold out for years. GE Vernova’s turbine backlog stretches toward the end of the decade, with pricing power to match. The setup is heads-you-win, tails-you-win: every data center that can’t wait for a turbine calls Bloom; every one that can wait pays GE Vernova whatever it asks. The power shortage feeds both companies.
The molecule, the pipe, and the turbine. Same thesis Aschenbrenner built his fund on — AI’s power hunger is structural and still underpriced — without paying peak-euphoria multiples for the ticker cable news just discovered.
Is It Too Late to Buy Bloom Energy Stock? My Verdict.
Three situations, three moves. Pick yours.
You don’t own BE: Don’t chase it above $300. You’d be buying a beta-3 momentum stock at 30 times sales after the smart money trimmed and insiders sold. June 26 — an 18% single-day drop — is your preview of what one bad headline does here. This stock has proven it will hand you double-digit pullbacks on a regular schedule. Pick your level below the recent congestion and let the trade come to you. Patience is a position.
You own BE with gains: Do what Aschenbrenner did. Take something off. Not everything — the backlog is real and the thesis is intact. But nobody ever went broke booking a partial profit after a 1,400% move, and plenty of people have gone broke refusing to. Decide your risk now, while it’s a calm decision, not during the next 18% day when it’s an emotional one.
You want the thesis without the drama: Build the second layer. EQT for the molecule. Williams for the pipe. GE Vernova for the shortage. Lower multiples, real cash flows, and none of it depends on a single company executing a 10x manufacturing ramp without a stumble.
Here’s the bottom line. The Aschenbrenner story everyone is telling is about a trade that already happened — past tense. You can’t buy his entry at $90, and pretending otherwise is how retail turns someone else’s win into their own loss.
But the thing he was right about — that electricity is the scarcest input of the AI age — is maybe two innings in. The kid followed the money before anyone else. Now the money is moving again.
Follow it to the next layer. Get there before the headlines.
Editor’s Note: Every generation or so, the way money moves gets a fundamental upgrade. The people who see it coming have the chance to get extraordinarily wealthy. Everyone else watches from the sidelines. Luke Lango says that moment is here again, and Elon Musk is behind the upgrade in an amazing way. He’s revealing exactly what to buy, including one free pick, in this presentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Leopold Aschenbrenner sell Bloom Energy?
Partially. SEC 13F filings show his Situational Awareness fund reduced its Bloom Energy stake by roughly 35% in Q1 2026, from 10.1 million shares to about 6.5 million. The fund still holds a large position, and 13F data reflects quarter-end snapshots, not current holdings.
What stocks does Leopold Aschenbrenner own?
Per recent 13F filings, Situational Awareness LP’s disclosed holdings have included Bloom Energy, Intel, CoreWeave, Core Scientific, Nebius, and Taiwan Semiconductor, among others — a portfolio concentrated around AI compute and the power that feeds it. Filings lag by weeks and positions change.
Is it too late to buy Bloom Energy stock?
The company’s fundamentals are strong — 130% revenue growth, a ~$20 billion backlog, raised guidance — but the stock trades near 30 times sales with extreme volatility after a 1,400% one-year run. Chasing above $300 carries significant risk; disciplined investors may prefer waiting for pullbacks or owning adjacent names.
What is the Situational Awareness fund?
A hedge fund launched by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner with roughly $225 million, built around his thesis that AI progress will be constrained by electricity supply. The fund has grown to billions in assets on the strength of energy-and-compute bets like Bloom Energy.
Jonathan Rose spent 28 years trading professionally, including as a market maker on the CBOE and a floor trader at the CME and CBOT. Now, he breaks down institutional money flows live every trading day at 11 a.m. ET on his free daily trading show, Live Options With JR, where you can bring questions. If this article showed you something the headlines didn’t, that’s an hour a day of the same.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not personalized investment advice. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Positions referenced from 13F filings reflect quarter-end snapshots and may not represent current holdings.
