BlackRock 3.0 is starting to take shape — revenues from its private markets businesses are outpacing fees coming in from its fixed-income mainstays.
Despite its world-beating iShares ETF line hitting new highs in the third quarter of 2025, managing more than $5 trillion in assets after record net inflows of more than $150 billion, it’s not what the firm’s leadership is excited about.
Instead, CEO Larry Fink and his team are giddy about subscriptions and a business unit that represents less than 3% of its overall asset base.
The firm spent more than $27 billion to acquire private-credit giant HPS, infrastructure investor Global Infrastructure Partners, and private-markets data player Preqin, with the final deal — its $12 billion, all-equity purchase of HPS — closing at the start of the third quarter.
Since the GIP deal closed on October 1 of last year, revenues from private market funds and tech subscriptions, including Preqin and BlackRock’s existing risk analytics platform Aladdin, have outpaced those from fixed-income funds and ETFs —once the firm’s bread and butter — each quarter, and the gap is only going to grow.
The firm added roughly $105 billion in private market assets last quarter, thanks to more than $100 billion from HPS. The addition of the private credit business to BlackRock’s coffers has helped fuel a 136% growth in fees from private market funds through the first three quarters of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. Martin Small, the firm’s chief financial officer, said that even without Preqin, tech services revenue is up 12% year-over-year.
“I’ve never been more excited about the future of BlackRock,” said Fink, speaking on Tuesday’s earnings call.
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Just as BlackRock, with $13.5 trillion in assets, rode the passive-investing wave in the 2010s to become more than a fixed-income investment manager, the firm has shifted its focus to the lucrative private markets, where fees are higher, capital is stickier, and 401(k) money may soon flood in.
This isn’t to say the firm has turned away from bond investing. Last quarter, fixed-income funds attracted tens of billions of new capital, and the firm has more than $3 trillion in products focused on the asset class.
But BlackRock is focused on where institutional capital is flowing, and Fink and Small spoke Tuesday about the extended conversations the HPS team is having with their insurance clients. GIP raised the largest infrastructure fund ever this summer, at more than $25 billion.
“The depth and breadth of BlackRock’s global platform,” as Fink described the firm’s many offerings, is spreading even further.
