BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss the company's quarterly earnings results, latest market trends, impact of AI and technological advancements, benefits of long-term investing, and more.
What Larry Fink said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Larry Fink said he is very bullish on markets over the next 12 months, driven by a technological revolution that will improve margins for many companies. He argued the US must invest faster in power grids and be 'power agnostic' about energy sources, warning that states imposing moratoriums on power delivery are wrong. Fink noted BlackRock contracted nearly 1 gigawatt of power in Pennsylvania last quarter and that hyperscalers report demand exceeding supply. He said data centers cost $50-60 billion per gigawatt and his main worry is bringing down the cost of compute so small businesses can benefit. He dismissed concerns about systemic leverage, saying it is not as large as in 2008-2009, though he acknowledged pockets of risk in Korea and crypto. Fink said BlackRock's margins rose 260 basis points over 12 months, with headcount unchanged while assets grew by a trillion dollars.
Key takeaways
Fink is very bullish on markets over the next 12 months, citing technology-driven margin gains.
BlackRock contracted close to 1 gigawatt of power in Pennsylvania in the last quarter.
Data centers cost $50-60 billion per gigawatt, and demand exceeds supply at every hyperscaler.
BlackRock's margins rose 260 basis points in 12 months with headcount unchanged and assets up $1 trillion.
I believe the role of financing infrastructure around technology, whether it's financing data centers or financing the purchase of chips, as I said earlier, I think we're going to have markets in investing in compute. We're going to have a futures market. This is going to be the next revolution in finance, and it happens because of the strength of the United States capital markets having the ability to finance these new technologies. So the United States and other places in the world can be leaders in the new technologies.
You mentioned 50 years. So I am curious. Have you ever seen anything quite like this, Larry? We've got what were the most profitable companies the world has ever seen making a choice to incinerate, wrong word, to decide not to have any free cash flow anymore, to not return capital to shareholders because they have to be part of this headlong race to make sure they are not left behind in the AI future. When I listen to myself say that, there's some worrisome aspects to that, are there not? I mean, I've spoken to some of the leaders this week and last week in that sector. Their biggest worry right now is supply is not keeping up with demand, and you see that showing up in the value of the memory stocks. Okay, we have more demand for memory than we have supply. Obviously they've been able to do big price increases. I don't know how sustainable that is. Maybe in three or four years we'll have enough supply, but you know, and so what we see as a big investor in data centers, the demand for compute is not slowing down, it's growing faster. The problem we have as a country is we're not investing fast enough, so I have an opposite.
So you're saying we're just not even? We need to do even more. A trillion dollar capex spend from six companies not enough? I believe it's well, not just there. We're not investing our grids fast enough. We do not have enough adequate supply of power, and that's what's creating some of the issues at certain state levels that they're worried about electricity prices for the consumer, which is a legitimate issue. But other states that have more power and more capability of delivering power, and delivering power that is not going to raise the price to the consumer, are going to be the big winners for growth. Yeah. So, in the last quarter, we contracted close to 1 gigawatt of power in Pennsylvania. Okay. We're financing another big data center in another state. And in my conversation with every hyperscaler, demand is exceeding supply. And yes, you're right. These large companies used to be balance sheet light, and now their business has changed. But that's the role of the capital markets, and I promise you these are going to be great investments for individuals if we could.
But you've got to know that the underlying business model ultimately that we get to is going to generate enough revenue and profit to be able to pay for all the data centers. They're not cheap.
Yeah. They're 50 to 60 billion dollars for one gigawatt. What I worry about, Dave, is not the demand side. I worry about can all of society benefit from AI because right now compute is so expensive. My question to everybody in the hyperscaler business is not whether they have enough demand, it's how quickly can they bring down the cost of compute. I'm not worried about BlackRock paying for the AI. I think we've been a huge investor in it, and our systematic equity team has really benefited with the flows and the return. But I worry about the small and medium businesses: how are they going to be able to compete in this new AI technology world? So the biggest question I ask behind the scenes is how quickly can we bring down the cost of compute. And okay, they tell me it's like Moore's law and how quickly they can develop faster and faster analytics to have faster compute. But unless we develop better technology and better systems in our grid to provide more power, more consistent power, I believe the United States must be power agnostic. We should not care if it comes from solar or hydrocarbons. We have to be there. But we need to be manufacturing the solar panels in the United States, building the battery storage. At least we can do the battery storage here.
Fink, L. (2026, July 15). BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: I'm very bullish on the markets over the next 12 months [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1087747/
MLA
Larry Fink. "BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: I'm very bullish on the markets over the next 12 months." CNBC Television, 15 Jul. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1087747/.
BibTeX
@misc{fink2026_1087747,
author = {Larry Fink},
title = {BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: I'm very bullish on the markets over the next 12 months},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jul},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1087747/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
