July 2026 Recap + Situational Awareness Update

Given last week’s drama in AI stocks, below we share what we know from public filings regarding Situational Awareness.

Using OWL’s returns estimates, we can see that as of Wednesday, the fund’s publicly disclosed holdings had fallen over 45%, the worst performance of more than 1,600 managers OWL tracks that have at least 4 disclosed holdings, and excluding managers with a low confidence interval for the return estimates.

The AI selloff led to OWL’s tech group showing the worst performance as of last Wednesday, although there was wide dispersion in that group as software focused investors (Fernbridge, HMI, Tencore, Keenan, etc.) saw gains, while investors with large AI exposure saw losses. The disclosed holdings of managers in OWL’s Japan group performed best in July, one of just four OWL groups to notch positive performance this month.

As a reminder, the table below is based on our “OWL Groups” – curated lists of over 500 managers frequently found in leading allocators’ portfolios. These lists are categorized by geography, sector, and style, enabling our users to easily monitor groups of managers and their underlying disclosed holdings. All returns shown are estimates based on publicly disclosed holdings.

Here’s what we know from public data and news reports regarding Situational Awareness.

The firm reported a regulatory AUM of $9.3 billion as of 12/31/2025, however CNBC has reported that the fund was as large as $45 billion at the start of July, with a portfolio reportedly 2/3 public and 1/3 private (including a large position in Anthropic). The fund was reported to use 4x leverage in its public portfolio – if, hypothetically, the public book was 250% long and 150% short, that would imply that its portfolio of longs was worth $75 billion in early July.

According to OWL’s “Cumulative P&L” chart, the fund’s portfolio of disclosed longs peaked at $12.5 billion in value as of late June. Situational Awareness also anchored SK Hynix’s ADR offering on the NASDAQ earlier in July and is rumored to own Samsung and Kioxia as well. While there are no public disclosures for the latter two positions, Kioxia does disclose Goldman Sachs as a major shareholder as of 3/31/26, which could be related to a swap position.

Given all of the above, it seems likely that Situational Awareness was utilizing swaps or other derivatives to gain additional exposure to its positions. Similar to the Archegos situation a few years ago, while there is no record tying specific managers to swap positions, they typically do show up as reported positions of the banks that the managers work with to put on the trades. For example, here are aggregate bank holdings for the top 10 holdings owned by Situational Awareness, using shares disclosed as of 3/31 and pricing as of 7/29:

On the private side, Situational Awareness is believed to still hold its position in Anthropic, despite reports that it tried to at least partially offload the position prior to striking a deal with Citadel for the public portfolio. Rumored potential buyers for the Anthropic position include Greenoaks and Sequoia.

Despite the volatility last week (coincidentally the week before Leopold’s wedding), it’s worth noting that according to the letter he sent to investors on Thursday, Situational Awareness is still up 80% YTD.

Disclosed LPs for Situational Awareness include the Laniakea Foundation, whose founder is Matt Wage, a proponent of effective altruism and reportedly a trader at Jane Street, and the Good Forever Foundation, whose founders are associated with The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). Press reports have also included Patrick and John Collison as investors in the fund.

Beyond Situational Awareness, many other managers whose disclosed holdings performed poorly in July are heavily weighted toward AI-related stocks. In March, OWL published a newsletter on the managers behind the biggest AI winners. Given the recent market dynamics, we’re taking another look at a handful of the public managers we included on that list and how they’re doing 4 months later.

Analog Century Management

Atreides

Madison Avenue

Situational Awareness

Value Aligned Research Advisors

Whale Rock

Note: Regulatory AUMs are included as disclosed in March 2026

The most common holding across these managers is Sandisk, where all six currently hold a position, excluding Atreides. Sandisk is the largest disclosed position in Madison Avenue’s portfolio (23%) and the second largest in both Situational Awareness’s (18%) and Whale Rock’s (9%). Sandisk’s heavy weighting in Madison Avenue’s portfolio means it had an outsized effect on its July performance.

Sandisk’s stock, while up well over 2,000% in the past year, has lost over 55% of its value in the past month. Beyond the most common holdings above, the table below shows additional overlap among these managers with disclosed position sizes as a percentage of their disclosed portfolio:

OWL is an intelligence platform built for allocators, by allocators. Leading endowments, foundations, and family offices use the system to find, monitor, and connect with thousands of fund managers globally. OWL's analytics engine has collected over one billion data points from 65 countries. We make it easy for allocators to find and track information about the managers they care about – not just positions but also performance analytics, people data, business information, and details about the manager investments of other allocators.

Returns represent the return on invested capital of publicly disclosed long positions, as calculated by OWL. Actual returns may vary based on a number of factors, including (but not limited to) undisclosed positions, short exposure, non-equity holdings, cash holdings, and lagged disclosure of positions.

This newsletter and the material on the Old Well Labs platform are for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, manager, or strategy. Certain investment managers, funds, or limited partners (“LPs”) referenced herein may be current or prospective clients of Old Well Labs, and Old Well Labs may have business relationships with such parties. Accordingly, references to any manager, fund, or LP should not be construed as an endorsement, recommendation, or solicitation. Old Well Labs shall not be liable for any investment gain or loss that may occur from the use of this material. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form or used in any publication without express written permission from Old Well Labs.