Last month, Blackstone paid $2 billion to take private digital solutions provider TaskUs, in one of its latest bets after a highly active quarter for capital deployment.
Six publicly traded asset managers—Apollo Global Management, Ares, Blackstone, The Carlyle Group, KKR and TPG—deployed $23.5 billion in private equity capital in Q1 2025, marking a 17% quarter-over-quarter increase, according to PitchBook’s Public PE and GP Deal Roundup.
The report credited Blackstone with the highest deployment figure among the group, investing $8.7 billion—a 125.2% increase from Q4 and a 153.4% jump year-over-year.
Deployment levels across the group mirrored broader trends in private equity as firms took advantage of credit availability, ample dry powder and a positive outlook for the year, though growing tariff uncertainty took hold toward the end of the quarter, noted Kyle Walters, a PitchBook private equity analyst.
Against a backdrop of tariff uncertainty, the largest firms were opportunistic and put capital to work. Last month, PitchBook reported that the managers took varying approaches in response to market volatility, with KKR, for example, looking overseas for deals.
The largest PE deal from this cohort in Q1 came in February, when Blackstone acquired Safe Harbor Marinas for $5.65 billion. The firm’s infrastructure platform scooped up the marina management company, which specializes in luxury tourism, considered to be a sector relatively insulated from market volatility.
Walters predicts managers will take a more cautious approach in Q2, prioritizing investment in sectors that are less exposed to tariffs, such as technology. The asset managers are also expected to lean more heavily on their global portfolios, which in many cases were already expanding before trade tensions escalated.
“I’d say for us, having $177 billion of dry powder and some real long-term conviction in the sectors we like—digital infrastructure, energy and power, life sciences, alternatives, the recovery in commercial real estate, what’s happening in India and Japan—we are going to see this as an opportunity to put out more capital,” said Jonathan Gray, Blackstone’s COO, during the firm’s latest earnings call.
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