Blackstone released its fourth-quarter results last week, and the firm’s performance and management commentary both point toward a real rebound in market activity.
In the words of CFO Michael Chae, the period solidified the team’s “conviction that the deal cycle would accelerate, including a resurgence in capital markets activity.”
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Net realizations from investment exits jumped 59 percent in the fourth quarter to hit the highest level in more than three years. For dealmakers, that meant a 15 percent year-over-year increase in carried interest distributions to $1.1 billion.
Management fees increased 11 percent year over year to a record $2.1 billion, driven by 10 percent growth in base management fees and a 27 percent increase in transaction and advisory fees as dealmaking activity bounced back.
“The deal environment feels like it’s reached escape velocity,” Jonathan Gray, Blackstone’s president, said. “We have a big drawdown cycle underway.”
Blackstone deployed $138 billion across the firm in 2025, its highest level in four years, while private equity realizations hit $33.9 billion. Gray expects the stronger exit environment to continue and noted the firm now has “one of the largest IPO pipelines in our history,” distributed across multiple sectors and geographies.
Gray was also optimistic that strategic appetite is rebounding.
“We do see strategics now given the strength of their stocks and the fact that the regulatory environment is much more conducive for M&A. There is more confidence as we have sort of normalized the approach in terms of evaluating antitrust issues.”
On the new deal front, Blackstone signed or closed eight privatizations during the year across private equity and real estate, including the $18 billion take-private of medical technology company Hologic in the fourth quarter.
Across all new investments, CFO Michael Chae says the firm targeted “key thematic areas such as digital infrastructure, including data centers, power, and electrification, private credit, life sciences, and from a regional perspective, India and Japan.”
“It feels like 2013-2014, where you had that four, five-year hibernation period, the markets reopened, and we took a bunch of companies public,” Gray said. “And that is the way it feels today.”
That earlier window produced a multi-year run of distributions that returned capital to LPs and drove subsequent fundraising cycles. Gray says this motion is now starting back up: “As they get capital back, as they get gains back, it makes it easier for them to allocate more capital to us. It does get that flywheel going again.”
“I think we forget sometimes that the last four years have been an abnormal period, that M&A and IPO activity have been well below historic levels, and we are moving back towards more historic levels of activity,” Gray added.
Fundraising momentum is starting to build: Blackstone raised around $240 billion for the full year across institutional, private wealth, and insurance channels, lifting total assets under management 13 percent to nearly $1.3 trillion.
“In corporate private equity, we have raised over $10 billion to date for our next Asia flagship, compared to approximately $6 billion for the previous vintage, and expect to reach over $12 billion,” said Gray.
“We also launched fundraising for our fifth private equity energy transition vehicle, which we expect to be meaningfully larger than the prior vintage of approximately $5.5 billion, with a first close anticipated this spring … [and] held initial closings of $5 billion for our new PE secondaries flagship, targeting at least the size of the prior $22 billion vintage, with another major close expected in the coming weeks.”
Private wealth was another bright spot for the firm, with fundraising up 53 percent year over year to $43 billion.
Blackstone’s private wealth assets under management reached $300 billion—a threefold increase over five years. Analyst research cited by management estimates the firm now generates more than 50 percent of all private wealth revenue across major alternative managers.
Coming up, Gray expects 2026 to be a “foundational year” for building toward 401(k) market access as managers await the outcome of the Department of Labor’s rulemaking process. 401(k) fundraising activity, however, isn’t likely to start until 2027.