Whale Rock Flagship Fund Plummets 21.7% in July, AI Bet's Year-to-Date Gains Nearly Halved

TechFlow news, August 5, according to BeInCrypto, the Boston hedge fund Whale Rock Capital Management's flagship fund fell 21.7% in July alone, marking its worst single-month performance in 2026, with year-to-date returns plummeting from 72.5% at the end of June to 35.1%.

The fund had previously been heavily invested in the chip and AI infrastructure sectors, with holdings including SanDisk, Bloom Energy, and CoreWeave. All three faced a sector-wide sell-off in the memory chip sector in July, with SanDisk cumulatively falling 30% over the past month. Large tech stocks such as Google and Meta also experienced slight pullbacks, as market concerns over continued high AI spending intensified.

Whale Rock was not the only institution to suffer losses. Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund lost as much as 67% in July, the largest single-month drawdown for a hedge fund that month, due to forced liquidation of stock positions.