Blackstone's growth continued unabated in the first half of 2026. The company leveraged its extensive data centre and AI platform to deliver strong shareholder returns. In the second quarter, the company reported year-on-year growth of over 20 percent in total revenues, fee-related earnings, fee-related profit, net income, and distributable earnings. This was stated by Michael Chae, the company's Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer.
Chae emphasised that the company's continuous development and the expanding scope of its activities had fundamentally changed its earning power, both in terms of scale and the breadth and sources of earnings. The private equity powerhouse reported a 26 percent year-on-year increase in distributable earnings to $2 billion. Fee-related earnings rose by 22 percent to $1.7 billion, or $1.29 per share, and net income increased by 27 percent. This occurred despite geopolitical challenges.
Capital inflows into Blackstone reached $70 billion in the second quarter and totalled $260 billion over the past 12 months. The company's total assets under management (AUM) thus increased by 11 percent year-on-year to a record $1.35 trillion. Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, spoke of “excellent results in the second quarter”. He added that the most significant driver of these strong results was extensive investment in artificial intelligence, including data centres, energy, and the AI companies themselves.
Strategic Investments in Data Centres and Digitalisation
Schwarzman highlighted that Blackstone has become one of the largest private capital providers in the entire AI ecosystem, primarily by building what he described as “the world’s largest data centre development business”. This growth has been achieved through the acquisition of QTS Data Centers in 2021 and through direct investments in Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and SpaceX.
In the second quarter, Blackstone also launched the Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust (ticker BXDC), a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) focused on acquiring stabilised, newly built data centres. BXDC's $2 billion offering became the largest blind-pool REIT IPO in history. Schwarzman commented that the market for long-term ownership of stabilised data centres is still nascent today, but he sees a potential of $1 trillion and beyond, representing enormous potential for BXDC.
Diversified Portfolio and Contributions from Residential Housing
Chae pointed out, with a view to the company's broader commercial real estate portfolio, that the QTS Data Centers business was the sole driver of value appreciation in infrastructure and commercial real estate in the second quarter. This was primarily due to the “extraordinary leasing momentum” and “significant gains” the company recorded in its data centre investments in Europe and Asia. The value appreciation in data centres offset declines in life sciences and office markets. 80 percent of the company's global CRE equity platform is invested in three asset classes: data centres, logistics, and residential rentals.
- —In logistics, Blackstone's largest real estate exposure, leasing activity in the US is accelerating significantly.
- —Blackstone's global and Asian data centre strategies recorded value increases of 7 percent and 3.7 percent respectively in the second quarter.
- —All of the company's real estate funds, especially the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT), benefited significantly from their growing exposure to data centres.
Residential housing was also an important topic. On 11 May, Blackstone announced that its Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies (BREDS) – a $78 billion real estate debt platform – would invest an amount of financing, yet to be determined, for the construction of over 50,000 homes for sale annually in the US. This marks a first for the company. Blackstone will involve a portfolio company, Brio Homebuilder Solutions, and numerous third-party partners to finance the construction of these new single-family homes, at a time when the country is grappling with a housing crisis.
Jonathan Gray, President and Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone, attributed the company's investment performance in the second quarter to the confidence of the investor community. He highlighted that institutions, insurance companies, and institutional investors made “robust inflows” into all of the company's fundraising channels. Gray emphasised BXMA (Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing), the company's global alternative asset management division, whose assets rose to $109 billion, a 21 percent increase year-on-year. This fund has achieved 25 consecutive quarters of positive returns for its largest strategy.
