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

12. IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN)

Situational Awareness LP’s Stake: $401 Million

IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN) has consistently featured in the 13F portfolio of Situational Awareness LP since the first quarter of 2025. Back then, this position consisted of just 3.3 million shares. In the quarters since, the fund has steadily added to this stake, growing it by 90%, 12%, and 20% in the next three quarters. Filings for the first quarter of 2026 show that the fund owned close to 12 million shares in the firm, up 35% compared to filings for the fourth quarter of 2025. The firm operates in the vertically integrated data center business in Australia and Canada. It owns and operates computing hardware, as well as electrical infrastructure and data centers. The company also mines Bitcoin. Leopold Aschenbrenner has been exceedingly bullish on companies transitioning from Bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure providers.

IREN Limited (NASDAQ:IREN) has managed to instantly monetize physical data center footprint through long-term, high-margin hyperscaler partnerships. In latest financial disclosures, IREN announced a landmark $9.7 billion, 5-year AI cloud contract with Microsoft. Under the terms of this sweeping agreement, the firm is deploying advanced NVIDIA architectures across 200 megawatts of dedicated data center space at the flagship Childress, Texas campus. The contract features a 20% upfront prepayment from Microsoft to immediately fund incoming equipment costs, and it is structured to generate $1.94 billion in Annual Recurring Revenue. Through Bitcoin mining operations that are now being put towards AI compute, IREN commands 3 gigawatts of total secured power capacity across the data center pipeline.