From the property mavens at Bangkok's Mingtiandi, April 25:
Blackstone booked $68.5 billion in capital inflows during the first quarter of 2026, in a show of the private equity titan’s fundraising resilience amid market turmoil triggered by the Iran war.
The haul was down only slightly from the previous quarter’s $71.5 billion and brought trailing 12-month inflows to $246.3 billion, according to results released Thursday. First-quarter fundraising was led by $37 billion channelled into credit and insurance strategies, underscoring investor appetite for yield-oriented products during volatile conditions.
“Blackstone delivered outstanding first‑quarter results despite the turbulent environment, highlighted by almost $70 billion of inflows and positive appreciation across nearly all of our flagship strategies,” said chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman. “Our all-weather model protects us in these times of disruption while also allowing us to invest where we see the greatest opportunity.”
Returns were supported by what the firm has branded “AI infrastructure”, with data centres and related assets driving performance across multiple strategies. Infrastructure investments posted a 7.8 percent gross return in the quarter and 24.8 percent for the past year, among the strongest showings across asset classes.
Revolutionary Road
Blackstone is positioning itself at the centre of what Schwarzman described as an AI revolution, pointing to an “extraordinary level of investment” spanning data centres, semiconductors and energy systems.In an earnings call, Schwarzman traced Blackstone’s early move into the theme back more than a decade, noting that he began engaging with leading figures in artificial intelligence in 2015, well before the current wave of generative AI adoption. That early positioning culminated in the 2021 privatisation of Virginia-based QTS, which Schwarzman said became the “cornerstone” of the firm’s data centre strategy and helped establish its scale in the sector.
Blackstone now counts more than $150 billion in data centre assets globally, including facilities under construction, with a further $160 billion in prospective development pipeline. The firm has been scaling its Asia Pacific data centre platform aggressively, using its control of Sydney-based AirTrunk as a regional backbone....
....MUCH MORE
Previously from Mingtiandi on data centers:
July 13, 2024
Asian Property Development: Three Data Center Operators And A Warehouser
The Asian data center business is coming on strong. Three from Mingtiandi (Asian real estate intelligence)
And most recently on Blackstone's infrastructure push:
March 10 - "Blackstone Launching Public Vehicle for Data Center Acquisitions" (BX)
One more self-reverential referential snippet, this time from May 2025's "Infrastructure: Blackstone Is Buying An Electric Utility (BX; TXNM)"
This
is something we will see more of, private equity in regulated
utilities. It's hard to asset-strip the darn things due to said
regulators but boy-oh-boy do they cash flow. Just ask Warren Buffet....
