Blackstone saw higher-than-Wall Street earnings in the second quarter, as gains from its AI holdings and record client inflows lifted the company’s assets under management to about $1.35 trillion.
Blackstone says nine of its top ten positions are related to artificial intelligence.
Quarterly earnings beat consensus by a wide margin
The company’s distributable earnings came in at $1.52 per share, up from $1.21 in the second quarter of 2025. Analysts polled by LSEG had their forecast at $1.35, so the actual numbers comfortably met the consensus.
Total revenues rose 36% to $5.04 billion, while fee-related earnings were $1.43 per share, equivalent to $1.78 billion.
The company’s infrastructure investments division achieved total returns of 7.2%, with positive asset sales after a slow start to the year. Blackstone sold a partial stake in three data centers to Digital Realty, handing control of energy infrastructure company Saber Industries to TPG. These deals increased total monetization proceeds to $31.8 billion.
Artificial intelligence at the center of Blackstone’s portfolio
Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman He said This quarter validated the company’s previous bets on artificial intelligence. The company “decided to go into the mega trend in AI,” he said, adding that becoming a “widely trusted partner for many key innovators” has left the company in good stead.
Its holdings include a stake in Anthropic, the maker of Claude, as well as a data center business that has been positioned as a primary profit driver. Blackstone acquired private data center platform QTS in a $10 billion deal in 2021, and the value of the platform has risen sharply as demand for computing capacity has increased in recent months.
Private equity positions in SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI added to gains, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The company also continues to write big checks for AI, with its credit and insurance unit joining a $35 billion financing platform created alongside Broadcom and Apollo Global Management to finance AI infrastructure for frontier labs, including Anthropic Labs. In a separate arrangement, Blackstone and Google announced they would form an AI-powered cloud company running on Google chips, with Blackstone committing $5 billion in equity.
Retail funds are seeing a decline
New retail funds at BCRED, the leading private credit fund for individual investors, decreased To $1 billion from $1.9 billion in the first quarter and $3.7 billion a year earlier. The fund’s net returns rebounded to 0.4% after an unexciting first quarter, still below the 2.2% it achieved a year ago. The BCRED Fund has a total of $79 billion.
Blackstone Private Equity Strategies raised $2.4 billion, infrastructure fund BXINFRA raised $861 million, and real estate fund BREIT raised $1.2 billion.
In an interesting turn of events, Blackstone shares fell in early trading, coming back from an initial explosion before the market opened to fall 1.1% before Thursday’s open.
