About Larry Fink
Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, has made a series of public appearances over the past year to discuss energy policy, infrastructure investment, capital markets, and workforce development. At the 2021 MIT GCFP conference, Fink stated that environmental policies were contributing to inflation and rising energy costs by changing supply without changing demand. He also said the world needed to focus on creating a just transition and new technologies to bring down the cost of green energy, and argued that divestiture from fossil fuels was a form of greenwashing. Fink also said that if the United States is serious about climate change, it would need to reimagine the IMF and World Bank.
In 2026 appearances, Fink discussed the demand for artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure, stating that there is not an AI bubble but rather significant supply shortages where demand is growing faster than anticipated. He described a potential new asset class involving futures on computing power. Alongside Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Fink announced a $30 million investment as part of BlackRock's "Future Builders" initiative to train electricians and skilled tradespeople in Texas, in response to what he called a massive demand for workers. During BlackRock's Q1 2026 earnings call, Fink noted the firm had raised $744 billion in net inflows over the past 12 months and saw assets surpass $11 trillion, citing growth in private markets and wealth management. He described the United States as a "juggernaut" in capital markets and called for expanding access to private assets to help more people grow their retirement savings.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Larry Fink's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Host0:00
$10.5 trillion, and as you probably guessed, you already saw him. Joining us exclusively is BlackRock's Chairman and CEO, Larry Fink.
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Larry Fink0:12
Lot of noise. IPOs are always a good thing. Brings more capital into the market, expands the capital markets.
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Host0:18
I might want to get to that with you, but let's start off with the earnings themselves. You're talking about the uncertain backdrop, but it doesn't mean there's a lack of opportunities. You had decent inflows this quarter, interestingly more into fixed income than other areas, although maybe that was expected.
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Larry Fink0:34
I think in a period of so much uncertainty, growing fear of more anxiety throughout the world, people are staying a little close. And you know, we have had $9 trillion of money now into money market funds. Record levels. And some of that money is going into fixed income. But the alternative, though, if you were fully invested in the equity market, you would have made 25% return. And this is what I try to talk about. It's not about the moment. Yes, there's uncertainty, but over the long run, do you believe in American-style capitalism? Do you believe in the markets? Over the long run, I do believe our markets are going to continue to be driving excess returns above what you can earn in a money market fund.
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Host1:17
And on the call, you talked about what you believe are still great opportunities, your words, for investors across a number of structural trends. I might expect those include the likes of, what, A.I.? What else?
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Larry Fink1:28
The combination—A.I. cannot truly happen unless there's a huge investment in infrastructure. The amount of energy that is required for A.I. is enormous, and the amount of power generation. We will run out of electricity if we are going to fully adopt a full A.I. world. And so the need to build out—this is all going to stimulate our economy, by the way—to build out a more A.I. world, which at the backside is that means building out more electricity power.
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Host2:00
For the data centers, obviously, they consume so much electricity.
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Larry Fink2:02
We're going to have to be building out tens and tens of gigawatts. Not megawatts, gigawatts. And we're talking trillions of dollars of investing. So, the opportunity is enormous in the coming years. And this is one of the fundamental reasons why I believe the United States is leading this. But let's be clear. I'm talking to political leaders in other countries, and their desire to build out data centers, A.I., technology at the same time decarbonization. So I remain a little more constructive, why I believe there's elevated inflation in the world, and I think all of this is playing out. But back to our earnings, you know, we had a record amount of assets, $10.5 trillion. All of it's our clients' money. More than 50% of it is retirement. And we saw flows across the board, worldwide. We had active flows where still, in many cases, active outflows are occurring in the industry. We had inflows. And so, the resiliency of our business is only accelerating. For the first time in a long time, I noted our pipeline has never been stronger of noted wins that are...
