Mega-funds out of traditional buyout behemoths like Blackstone, Apollo Global Management and The Carlyle Group have historically outshone BlackRock‘s private capital business, but BlackRock’s recent push signals a strategic shift in ambitions to be a leader in that market.
The $11.6 trillion asset manager seeks to raise $400 billion in private capital commitments by 2030, largely through its private wealth and insurance investors, according to an investor presentation on Thursday. The firm also aims to bring in $35 billion in revenue by 2030, largely through management fees paid on private market products, and to double its market cap to $280 billion by the end of the decade.
Last year, the firm pushed deeper into the private markets with two massive acquisitions of alternative asset managers. In October, its acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners boosted its overall private market AUM by 40%. In December, it bought credit shop HPS Investment Partners, bringing in around $220 billion of additional assets under its supervision.
GIP’s fifth flagship fund has already brought in over $25 billion of LP commitments.
In his most recent annual letter to investors, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called for the “unlocking” of the private markets to the high-net-worth and individual investor channels, a nod to the firm’s strategic push into those areas. Using products like evergreen funds and perpetual capital vehicles, the firm also plans to extend its reach into the private wealth channel with HPS’s network, according to the presentation.
The move toward private wealth dollars signals BlackRock’s ambitions to follow—and eventually take market share away from—its largest competitors. Assets in perpetual capital strategies at the largest publicly traded alternative asset managers, including Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Carlyle, Ares, TPG and Blue Owl, totaled $1.7 trillion at the end of Q1 2025, about 41% of the firms’ cumulative AUM.
Blackstone touts the largest perpetual capital base, representing almost 40% of its total AUM as a firm. Its private wealth platform is also the largest of its peers’, with $270 billion in wealth AUM, according to PitchBook’s Q1 2025 US Public PE and GP Deal Roundup.
As part of its expansion plan, BlackRock plans to use its $700 billion in insurance AUM as a large portion of its capital base for its growing private markets business. For peers like Apollo, Blackstone and KKR, the insurance channel has proven to be a robust source of capital commitments. Apollo’s Athene and Athora platforms, for example, totaled $403 billion as of the end of Q1 2025, comprising over half of the firm’s total AUM, according to the PitchBook report.
HPS is a major provider of private credit for insurance clients, adding to BlackRock’s offerings for insurance clients.
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