From Fired Researcher to $13.7 Billion King: How Leopold Aschenbrenner Broke the Hedge Fund World

39. Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC)

Situational Awareness LP’s Stake: Sold Off

Latest filings show that Situational Awareness LP has sold off the stake it held in Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC). The stock had first appeared in the 13F portfolio of the fund in the fourth quarter of 2025. Back then, this position comprised 152,000 shares. The firm develops, manufactures, and sells data storage devices and solutions based on hard disk drive technology in the United States, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Following the official spin-off of the volatile flash memory business into a standalone entity, SanDisk, last year, Western Digital is now operating as a streamlined, high-margin pure-play leader in the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) market.

In Q3 2026, Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) delivered a non-GAAP gross margin of 50.5%, an expansion of 1,040 basis points year-over-year. This marks the first time in corporate history that gross margins have cleared the 50% threshold. Tight industry cost control and supply shortages have led to a demand curve. Average HDD prices have spiked dramatically over the trailing months, prompting major enterprise cloud providers to begin signing long-term 5-year supply contracts to secure capacity. The production capacity for high-capacity nearline drives at WDC is essentially sold out through the remainder of the calendar year.  Because of this hyper-efficient revenue mix, operating income leaped 116% year-over-year to $1.3 billion, pushing operating margins to 35.7%.