Last October, Blue Owl signed on the dotted line to acquire digital infrastructure fund manager IPI Partners for $1 billion, which added around $10.5 billion in AUM to the publicly listed firm. The purchase marked a turning point in Blue Owl’s strategic plan.
Along with IPI Partners’ portfolio of 82 US-based data centers, the deal brought some of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia into Blue Owl’s LP base, co-CEO Doug Ostrover said Friday at the firm’s investor day.
“We’re going to work hard on being able to cross-sell there,” he said.
The firm sees cross-selling, when firms market related products or services to their existing customers, as a huge area of opportunity. Blue Owl said 91% of its client base is committed to only one platform.
State-backed funds comprise a growing portion of the institutional investors backing private market deal activities over the past decade. In 2024, the total value of PE deals with sovereign backers reached $109.8 billion, up 64.5% from 2014, according to PitchBook data.
Since its last investor day in 2022, the firm has nearly tripled its AUM from $102 billion. Of its current equity commitments, sovereign funds comprise 8%, up from 5% of its AUM in 2022.
Blue Owl estimates that alternative managers will oversee $16 trillion in sovereign wealth fund assets by 2028, up from $11 trillion in 2022.
Still, Blue Owl’s LP base is mainly comprised of private wealth clients (32% of total commitments), insurance (20%) and public pension plans (19%).
With $291.4 billion in AUM, Blue Owl hopes that diversifying its investor base, along with investing in data centers and other strategic initiatives, will help it exceed $500 billion by 2029.
Featured image by Alexander Spatari/Getty Images
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