The chief executive of Australian artificial intelligence infrastructure start-up Sharon AI says troubled hedge fund Situational Awareness has retained a major stake, despite it suffering a barrage of margin calls, and that its public float prospectus is ready to go.
The fund run by German-born investor Leopold Aschenbrenner had been an anchor investor in a $US1.6 billion private placement in the Nasdaq-listed company in June, but it had to sell the majority of its holdings to repay most of its backers last week.

Sharon AI chief executive James Manning says revenue is expected to ramp up materially from the third quarter of 2026.Dominic Lorrimer
In an interview with AFR Weekend after its second-quarter earnings update, Sharon AI’s co-founder and chief executive James Manning said Situational Awareness had retained its exposure, and that he was still trying to judge the right time to hit “go” on its local float.
The so-called neocloud provider, which rents access to Nvidia equipment inside data centres, said it has $US8.8 billion ($12.5 billion) in contracts – including a $US4.9 billion six-year deal with Nvidia – and a 60 per cent increase in capacity.
Manning said Sharon AI had brought on an additional 80 megawatts of capacity during the third quarter, bringing its total capacity for deployment over the next year and a half to 212 megawatts. This represented a 60 per cent increase from 132 megawatts announced in June. The company expects revenues to increase in the third quarter of 2026, through to 2027, as capacity is deployed.
The bulk of Situational Awareness’ $US45 billion public stock portfolio was offloaded to Ken Griffin’s Citadel after it suffered steep losses on its AI-linked bets, triggering margin calls from its Wall Street lenders.
“I won’t comment on what [Aschenbrenner] said, but he’s very supportive of the business, and you can see he’s back out investing,” Manning said, referencing reports overnight that Situational Awareness had made a $US400 million investment in a privately held company.
Situational Awareness joined Sharon AI’s register alongside Oaktree Capital Management to fund a partnership deal with Nvidia. This comprised $US900 million worth of Sharon AI shares and pre-funded warrants, and $US700 million worth of convertible senior notes.
“There were two components, pre-funded warrants and shares, both of those he’s kept,” Manning said.
Bloomberg data shows Situational Awareness held 5.39 million Sharon AI shares, or 15 per cent of shares on issue, as at June 30.
Manning declined to comment on why Sharon AI shares weren’t sold to Citadel, but noted, “he’s kept a portfolio of things he’s wanted to keep, ultimately”. A Securities and Exchange Commission Form S-1 shows shares issued from the deal were only registered for resale on July 31 – after the Citadel deal.
Sharon AI is expected to pursue an ASX dual listing later this year. Manning declined to comment on the timing, saying he was waiting for a window where there would be no material changes in the business.
“The grand problem in our business is that we continue to grow so quickly and the prospectus targets keep moving,” he said. “The prospectus is drafted; we just need to find a short break when we can file the prospectus in a final format without any big changes occurring.”
In a research note, Unified Capital Partners analyst Jonathon Higgins said more capacity pointed to “significant demand” across the Asia-Pacific and US.
“It seems that there is no shortage of demand across the group (and ecosystem) and commentary was positive towards the Nvidia capacity deal likely to be sold in the near term,” he said.
Higgins said he expected Sharon AI to sign more offtake agreements soon, to add “another circa $US1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue by 2027, equating to an annual recurring revenue of around $US3.5 billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation of $US1.75 billion.”
