Blackstone Raises $69B in Q1, Says AI Infrastructure Driving Returns Across Funds

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.

AirTrunk entered India this month through the acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra, a Blackstone-backed developer with 600 megawatts of planned capacity across key cities including Mumbai and Chennai. The deal boosted exposure in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI infrastructure markets, with India’s data centre capacity expected to expand sharply on cloud adoption and sovereign AI initiatives.

Led by founder and CEO Robin Khuda, AirTrunk is nearing 2 gigawatts of operational capacity across APAC, with additional expansion pipeline in key markets including Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. Blackstone has complemented that push with investments in emerging platforms like India’s Neysa and Australia’s Firmus, both tied to the buildout of AI-driven computing capacity.

The Manhattan-based firm has also continued to advance its flagship APAC buyout strategy, raising $1 billion in the first quarter for its third regional private equity fund, Blackstone Capital Partners Asia III, to bring the vehicle’s total haul to nearly $12 billion — within sight of the $12.9 billion hard cap.

The firm’s global real estate platform, with $315.3 billion in assets under management, attracted $6.8 billion in inflows during the quarter, including capital raised for its flagship opportunistic funds and perpetual vehicles.

Blackstone deployed $7 billion into property investments during the period, including the acquisition of a minority stake in US hyperscale data centre developer Rowan Digital Infrastructure and the privatisation of Alexander & Baldwin, a Hawaii-based REIT.

AUM Hits $1.3T

The NYSE-listed fund manager reported first-quarter revenue of $3.6 billion, up from $3.3 billion in the year-earlier period. Net income edged up year-on-year to reach $1.3 billion, with net income attributable to shareholders totalling $650 million, while distributable earnings surged 25 percent to $1.8 billion.

Assets under management rose 12 percent year-on-year to $1.3 trillion, with fee-earning AUM climbing 9 percent to $937.6 billion. Blackstone deployed $35.6 billion during the quarter while generating $35.9 billion in realisations.

The firm’s third Asian opportunistic real estate fund, BREP Asia III, stood at $8.2 billion in committed capital, unchanged from the previous quarter and still well shy of the 2022-vintage vehicle’s $9 billion target.