The Invisible Winner of the AI Power Grab Battle: Former OpenAI Researcher Bets 1 Billion on Bitcoin Miners

Author: DLNews

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: Leopold Aschenbrenner, 24 years old, fired from OpenAI, managing a $5.5 billion hedge fund—almost 20% of his holdings are in Bitcoin miner stocks. But his logic isn’t about bullishness on the coin price; it’s about recognizing what miners hold that AI companies desperately want but can’t get: ready-made industrial-grade power infrastructure. When new data centers take three to five years to connect to the grid, miners’ access rights to power are becoming assets more valuable than Bitcoin itself.

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Leopold Aschenbrenner manages a $5.5 billion hedge fund.

This 24-year-old fund manager has nearly 20% of his holdings in Bitcoin miners.

But his bet is on the infrastructure and grid access needed for AI.

Bitcoin miners have just received a billion-dollar vote of confidence from an unexpected source: a former OpenAI researcher.

Leopold Aschenbrenner, 24, was fired from OpenAI in 2024 over suspected information leaks. Through his billion-dollar hedge fund, Situational Awareness LP, he has established a series of positions in the Bitcoin mining sector.

According to the latest filings with the SEC, Situational Awareness LP currently manages $5.5 billion, with about $1 billion invested in Bitcoin miners.

Aschenbrenner’s billion-dollar bet is one of the largest institutional investments in Bitcoin miners in recent months. But analysts say this signals that the industry’s real asset has never been Bitcoin itself, but electricity.

“The true value of miners has always been their energy infrastructure and grid access,” Nishant Sharma, founder of mining and computational power consulting firm Blocksbridge, told DL News. “In the current market, the valuation of underlying energy infrastructure often exceeds the value of the Bitcoin it could produce.”

As AI companies scramble for power capacity, well-known miner stocks have fallen to multi-year lows. Aschenbrenner, a former member of the FTX Future Fund charity team, sees enormous value in Bitcoin companies that possess gigawatt-scale industrial power.

And Aschenbrenner’s timing couldn’t be better.

After the 2024 halving cut block rewards in half, Bitcoin miners’ revenues have continued to be under pressure. On-chain activity has dried up, further worsening their situation by shrinking transaction fee income.

In response, miners are turning to AI—riding this hot trend—selling Bitcoin and abandoning their traditional business models.

Shareholders of Bitcoin miners are now demanding they accelerate their shift toward AI.

Aschenbrenner did not respond to interview requests.

His portfolio shows multiple large positions in the Bitcoin mining sector.

Specifically, he holds significant stakes in Core Scientific, Iris Energy, Cipher Mining, Riot Platforms, and Hut 8—Bitcoin miners actively transforming into AI companies, totaling about $1 billion.

Basically, he is targeting miners that have already taken substantial steps into AI.

Core Scientific has signed a 12-year contract with AI cloud service provider CoreWeave, expected to generate $10 billion in revenue; IREN aims to achieve over $500 million in annual AI cloud service revenue by early 2026; Riot recently shifted focus to AI and high-performance computing, signing a 10-year data center lease with AMD.

The economic logic behind this transformation is hard to ignore. If this trend continues, AI hosting will provide predictable, stable income, whereas Bitcoin mining depends on volatile cryptocurrency prices and fierce competition.

“Aschenbrenner’s bet makes sense,” Sharma said.

Competing for Power

AI faces a major problem: severe electricity shortages.

It is reported that training OpenAI’s GPT-4—one of the more popular large language models—consumes over 12 megawatts, equivalent to the electricity used by about 12,000 households.

Future models will likely require even more.

Access to this power is extremely difficult. In the U.S., connecting new data centers to the grid typically takes three to five years, due to layers of procedures such as environmental reviews, grid interconnection studies, transmission upgrades, and local permits.

These timelines are lengthy. Meanwhile, Bitcoin miners have entered the scene.

“Because the construction cycle for traditional data centers is so long, existing assets with power supply are extremely valuable to this demand-starved industry,” Sharma said.