Blackstone's Brand on IPO Returns, Anthropic Partnership

Summary

Martin Brand, head of Blackstone Capital Partners, discusses the firm's strong IPO exit engine and recent successes like Liftoff, as well as its AI infrastructure partnership with Google around TPU chips. He describes a bifurcated IPO market where AI demand is very strong and defensive assets get beat up, while Blackstone's pipeline and AI capacity position it favourably.

• Private equity mood is subdued due to a lack of exits, but Blackstone's exit engine is working well.
• Blackstone returned $14bn to investors since Jan 2025 and recently completed the Liftoff IPO, achieving a 10x return.
• The firm has seven more IPOs on file and believes demand will be there as long as performance persists.
• AI demand is very strong; defensive assets are underperforming; middle companies depend on moats and growth.
• Blackstone committed $5bn to a Google TPU infrastructure joint venture, citing constrained physical supply and growing AI demand.
• The TPU partnership gives Blackstone access to valuable compute capacity, expected to be a positive amid rising token costs.
• Anthropic partnership aims to provide engineering talent to portfolio companies, not a direct investable theme.