About Laurence Fink
Laurence Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, has been active in public discussions on infrastructure, capital markets, and workforce development. At the Milken Institute Global Conference in May 2026, Fink stated that the United States is "short power," "short compute," and "short chips," and suggested that a new asset class of buying futures of compute may emerge. He also said there is "not an AI bubble" but rather supply shortages, and described having money in a bank account as "one of the worst financial decisions of a lifetime," advocating for more people to invest in capital markets. In April 2026, Fink said on CNBC that BlackRock raised $744 billion over the prior 12 months and described the firm as being "at the beginning of growing the global capital markets."
In May 2026, Fink joined Texas Governor Greg Abbott in Waco to announce a $30 million investment from BlackRock's "Future Builders" initiative to train electricians and skilled trade workers. Fink said BlackRock manages $155 billion for Texans and called for "making capitalism work for more people," expressing concern that younger generations are questioning capitalism. During BlackRock's Q1 2026 earnings call, Fink said the firm is "partnering with governments and clients to help more people grow with their economies" and noted that private credit risk management infrastructure "has not kept pace," presenting an opportunity for BlackRock's Aladdin platform.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Laurence Fink's recent appearances.
Browse all interviews →
Transcript (5 segments)
B
Brian Sullivan0:00
Innovation Summit. The president and CEOs of energy and AI companies all gathering in Pittsburgh. We're going to turn back to Brian Sullivan, who joins us with a special guest. Hey, Brian.
Yeah, not just energy and AI, Carl, but the largest asset management firm in the world. New results this morning. BlackRock $12.5 trillion in assets under management. Organic fee growth 6% and going higher on that. Larry Fink is the founder and chair and CEO of BlackRock and joins us now. Larry, we're going to get to AI and energy and everything. Why we're here in just a second. The market's not loving the reaction to those earnings. They seemed very solid on the face. What are they missing?
L
Laurence Fink0:39
Well, I think they're missing the key to any company. Our organic growth is great, fee growth 6% fee growth. But our entry level going into the third quarter because of where the market went down quite a bit in April and rallied all throughout the year, so our entry level in the third quarter is up 5% already in fee growth. Then on top of the closing of HPS on July 1st, our fee growth going into the third quarter is up 10%. And so what are they missing? I think our expenses may be too high and our expenses are all front loaded. We do that because we are very aggressive on culture, and we try to bring everybody on board. HPS team is going to be moving in tomorrow into our headquarters. So we have co-rents for a little bit until we navigate that. But the key of any acquisition is building one key culture. And I think you know, our expenses have been front loaded. We kind of telegraphed that. But I'm thrilled where we are. I'm thrilled about our position with our clients, our shareholders. By the way, today, since we have many shareholder calls, we're thrilled about the opportunity. So this is just Wall Street's hedge funds going in and out of the market. And that's fine. They play a market role. And so I'm not against anything like that. But long term, I'm a huge buyer of BlackRock at these prices, okay.
B
Brian Sullivan2:07
And you've been a huge buyer of other companies. You referenced one deal. But the deal I want to talk about, which is why we're here, yes, GIP, Global Infrastructure Partners. Okay, I don't want to be too nice. That's a hell of a time deal. And that hasn't even fallen into results yet.
L
Laurence Fink2:25
Well, it's marginally, yes, marginally, but only marginally. Look, how big is the AI and infrastructure? You've already got some ETFs, etc. How big is the AI and infrastructure opportunity for BlackRock? I think it's enormous. I mean, we made a strategic study in 2023 and this is why we did these three acquisitions. We did GIP. We believe infrastructure is just at the beginning of a golden age. I'll get into that. We believe private credit will continue to grow and evolve. We did HPS, but also we believe that if you're going to be, if you believe there's going to be a melding between public and private markets, which we believe that's going to happen, what does that mean? Meaning portfolios are going to have both private markets and public markets. There's a possibility that the government, the US government, is going to allow in the contributions more private markets into DC. But the foundation of that is going to be data and analytics. So we bought Preqin, which is the smallest of the three deals. But it could be as impactful as any of them in terms, because I think more and more people are going to need analytics and data to justify the blending of public and private together in a portfolio. So we look at all three as a major component of our long-term strategy related to infrastructure. We believe that there's a need for trillions of dollars of investing in infrastructure related to our power grids. The whole digitization of an economy, we are still going to be investing in decarbonization. So all these different investments go together, don't they? They all go together. Plus making sure that we have adequate dispatchable energy. So all of this is all part of a plan. And we only had one target when we determined we needed to get even larger in infrastructure, and that was GIP. And since we announced the transaction, and generally at a time when you have this confusion of a merger, clients pause. But we announced also today that GIP was able to close a $25.2 billion infrastructure fund, GIP five, which was the largest third-party infrastructure fund ever raised. That's a big number, 25 billion. And then on top of that, how fast was that?
