Cards Before the Storm: On the Eve of the "AI Stock King" Liquidation, SA Bets Big on Memory Chips, Citadel Fully Hedged, and Jane Street Faces Massive Losses Despite Hundreds of Billions in Hedges

According to Zhitong Finance APP, the protagonist in the high-profile “AI Stock God” liquidation incident at the end of July — the hedge fund Situational Awareness (SA) — the main buyer of most of its stock holdings, Citadel Advisors, and Jane Street, which suffered heavy losses due to investing in SA, have recently released their Q2 13F holdings reports as of June 30, 2026.

Through these Q2 holdings, we can clearly see just how aggressively these leading titans deployed their chips along the AI compute power industry chain on the eve of this storm.

Situational Awareness

Statistics show that SA’s total market value of holdings in Q2 was $20.2 billion, compared to $13.7 billion in the previous quarter. In the second quarter, SA added 4 new stocks, increased positions in 12 stocks, reduced positions in 5 stocks, and fully exited 20 stocks. Among them, SA’s top ten holdings accounted for 91.77% of its total portfolio value.

Among the top five heavy holdings, SanDisk (SNDK.US) ranked first, with about 2.495 million shares held, a market value of about $5.67 billion, accounting for 28.52% of the portfolio, an increase of 118.87% in the number of shares from the previous quarter.

Micron Technology (MU.US) ranked second, with about 4.829 million shares held, a market value of about $5.57 billion, accounting for 28.01% of the portfolio, an increase of 27,712.38% in shares compared to last quarter.

Bloom Energy (BE.US) was third with about 6.273 million shares held, a market value of about $1.90 billion, accounting for 9.54% of the portfolio, a decrease of 3.28% compared to last quarter.

TSMC (TSM.US) was fourth with about 2.649 million shares, a market value of about $1.27 billion, accounting for 6.36%, and an increase of 11,713.92% in shares from last quarter.

Nebius (NBIS.US) was fifth with about 4.464 million shares, a market value of about $1.23 billion, accounting for 6.20% of the portfolio—a new position for the fund this quarter.

Positions six through ten are: CoreWeave (CRWV.US), Seagate Technology (STM.US), Applied Materials (APLD.US), Riot Platforms (RIOT.US), SharonAI Holdings (SHAZ.US).

It can be seen that SA's holdings for the second quarter are essentially built around the AI compute power industry chain. In addition to Nebius, Seagate Technology, Vishay Intertechnology (VSH.US), and Cerebras Systems (CBRS.US) were all new positions this quarter. Notably, the fund also fully exited Nvidia (NVDA.US), Intel (INTC.US), Corning (GLW.US), AMD (AMD.US), and ASML (ASML.US), concentrating all its assets into memory and compute infrastructure. In terms of transactions, its largest increases in Q2 were in Micron, SanDisk, and TSMC.

In terms of changes in position size, the top five buys were: Micron Technology, SanDisk, TSMC, Nebius, and Seagate Technology.

The top five sells were: VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH.US), Nvidia put options (NVDA.US, PUT), Oracle put options (ORCL.US, PUT), Broadcom put options (AVGO.US, PUT), AMD put options (AMD.US, PUT).

Citadel Advisors

Data show that Citadel Advisors’ Q2 portfolio had a total market value of $88 billion, compared to $620 billion in the previous quarter. In Q2, Citadel Advisors added 6,100 new stocks, increased holdings in 2,605 stocks, while trimming 4,815 stocks and fully exiting 1,887 stocks. The top ten holdings made up 22.67% of its total holdings.

In the top five holdings, SPDR S&P500 ETF call options (SPY.US, CALL) ranked first with about 47.748 million shares, a market value of about $35.66 billion, accounting for 4.07% of the portfolio and an increase of 76.66% from last quarter.

NASDAQ 100 ETF put options (QQQ.US, PUT) ranked second with around 36.060 million shares, a market value of $26.55 billion, accounting for 3.03% and an increase of 1.32% over last quarter.

NASDAQ 100 ETF call options (QQQ.US, CALL) ranked third with about 31.90 million shares, a market value of $23.49 billion, accounting for 2.68% and an increase of 63.62% over last quarter.

SPDR S&P500 ETF put options (SPY.US, PUT) was fourth with about 31.155 million shares, a market value of $23.27 billion, accounting for 2.66% and a decrease of 16.23% over last quarter.

Micron Technology put options (MU.US, PUT) ranked fifth with about 19.2754 million shares, a market value of $22.25 billion, accounting for 2.54% with a 15.31% increase from last quarter.

Positions six through ten are: Micron Technology call options (MU.US, CALL), Tesla call options (TSLA.US, CALL), iShares S&P 500 ETF (IVV.US), Nvidia call options (NVDA.US, CALL), SanDisk put options (SNDK.US, PUT).

It is noteworthy that the commercial space giant SpaceX (SPCX.US), which was listed in June, also attracted Citadel Advisors’ interest. The fund not only initiated a position in SpaceX but also bought both call and put options on the stock. Additionally, Citadel Advisors established a new position in Cerebras Systems this quarter. Their massive matrix of both long and short options (for example, the Put/Call combinations on Micron and SanDisk) demonstrates their top-tier risk hedging abilities.

In terms of position size changes, the top five buys were: Micron Technology put options, Micron Technology call options, SPDR S&P500 ETF call options, SanDisk put options, iShares S&P 500 ETF.

The top five sells were: SPDR S&P500 ETF put options, SPDR Gold ETF call options (GLD.US, CALL), Tesla call options, SPDR Gold ETF put options (GLD.US, PUT), Nvidia call options.

Jane Street

Data show that Jane Street’s Q2 portfolio had a total market value of $1.21 trillion, compared to $780 billion in Q1. In Q2, Jane Street added 2,581 new stocks to its portfolio, increased positions in 4,999 stocks, while trimming 3,741, and completely sold out of 2,599 stocks. The top ten holdings accounted for 32.48% of total assets.

Among the top five holdings, SPDR S&P 500 ETF put options (SPY.US, PUT) ranked first with about 150 million shares, a market value of $116.1 billion, accounting for 9.79% of the portfolio, up 37.20% from last quarter.

SPDR S&P 500 ETF call options (SPY.US, CALL) placed second, with about 72.825 million shares, $54.38 billion in market value, accounting for 4.59%, up 9.77% over the last quarter.

Micron Technology put options (MU.US, PUT) ranked third, holding about 36.421 million shares, a market value of $42.04 billion, accounting for 3.55% of the portfolio, up 21.69% from last quarter.

NASDAQ 100 ETF put options (QQQ.US, PUT) ranked fourth with about 49.238 million shares, a market value of $36.26 billion, accounting for 3.06%, up 20.93% from last quarter.

SPDR S&P500 ETF (SPY.US) was fifth, holding about 44.259 million shares, a market value of $33.05 billion, accounting for 2.79% of the portfolio, up a notable 118.13% from the last quarter.

Positions six through ten are: NASDAQ 100 ETF call options (QQQ.US, CALL), iShares Russell 2000 ETF put options (IWM.US, PUT), AMD put options (AMD.US, PUT), Nvidia call options (NVDA.US, CALL), Micron Technology call options (MU.US, CALL).

In terms of position change ratio, the top five buys were: Micron Technology put options, SPDR S&P500 ETF, Micron Technology call options, SanDisk put options (SNDK.US, PUT), AMD put options.

The top five sells were: Tesla call options (TSLA.US, CALL), SPDR Gold ETF call options (GLD.US, CALL), SPDR Gold ETF put options (GLD.US, PUT), Tesla put options (TSLA.US, PUT), Nvidia put options (NVDA.US, PUT).

Incident Review

Leveraging deep foundational insights into the AI industry gained from experience at the core research team of OpenAI, Leopold Aschenbrenner, once crowned the "AI Stock God" by the market, founded a hedge fund named “SA” in September 2024. The fund’s core strategy involved heavy bets on the AI infrastructure sector, with up to 4x leverage to amplify gains, and simultaneous short hedging of traditional software stocks. Thanks to high-leverage bets on AI-related stocks, SA produced eye-popping returns in just a few months. According to the fund’s letter to investors in early July this year, the composite return for the first half of 2026 reached as high as 439%. Reports show that SA’s assets under management climbed to as much as $45 billion in early July.

However, in July, the surging rally of the US AI stock sector underwent a violent reversal. AI hardware and memory chip segments saw a deep pullback, causing severe damage to SA’s highly concentrated portfolio. Data reveals that Micron Technology—a key holding—fell 28.69% over July, with SanDisk plummeting 46.57%. In stark contrast, software short positions used to hedge risks surged in the opposite direction, resulting in simultaneous long and short losses. High leverage further magnified the drawdown, quickly exhausting the fund’s margin cushion. SA received repeated margin calls and was ultimately forced to offload most public market holdings to Citadel, run by Ken Griffin, at a discount to avoid forced liquidation and minimize market impact.

Dragged down by the sharp drawdown of its holdings in SA, Jane Street suffered about $15 billion in losses in July. This marks the first month since 2016 that this Wall Street giant renowned for strict risk management and quantitative trading recorded negative trading revenue, sparking a major stir in the global trading community.

According to an internal Jane Street memo, the sharp drawdown in the SA fund almost wiped out its annual returns from the investment. Additionally, Jane Street’s non-AI long positions in Asia also incurred significant losses. High-return trades in the prior phase suffered from rapid style rotation, leading to collective losses across multiple strategies, culminating in a massive $15 billion monthly loss. Reportedly, this loss will be reflected in Jane Street’s third-quarter financials. Jane Street has since closed most risk exposures related to July's losses and reduced risk in other strategies.

Meanwhile, giants like Citadel Advisors, who had already built extensive Put/Call hedges at the end of Q2, successfully completed a “second harvest” of these high-quality compute assets by buying the dip during the July bloodbath.

This Q2 13F report freezes in time the "calm before the storm" prior to one of Wall Street’s most dramatic long-short showdowns in recent years.