BlackRock targets $400 billion in private assets through tokenisation and new market infrastructure

BlackRock’s push into tokenised private assets is becoming a central plank of its growth strategy, with the world’s biggest asset manager signalling that alternatives, infrastructure and blockchain-based products may matter more to its next phase of expansion than exchange-traded funds.

At its investor day on 12 June 2025, BlackRock set a goal of $400 billion in gross private-markets fundraising by 2030, underlining how far the firm has moved beyond its long-standing reputation as an ETF powerhouse. The target reflects a broader shift towards so-called evergreen and semi-liquid structures, which BlackRock is using to bring private credit, infrastructure and other less liquid assets to wealth, retirement and insurance channels.

The company has spent the past two years building the machinery for that pivot. It completed the purchase of Global Infrastructure Partners in 2024, giving it direct exposure to physical assets such as transport and energy networks. In 2025 it added HPS Investment Partners, strengthening its private credit and private equity reach, and it also bought data group Preqin, which provides much of the market intelligence needed to scale alternatives businesses.

That combination matters because BlackRock is not simply seeking more private assets under management; it is trying to make them distributable at scale. According to the firm’s own 2026 Private Markets Outlook, BlackRock sees a “new continuum” forming between public and private assets, with tokenisation acting as the connective tissue. The company’s bet is that digital wrappers can make traditionally illiquid assets more accessible and operationally efficient for large institutions and, eventually, a wider investor base.

The clearest sign of that ambition is BUIDL, BlackRock’s tokenised Treasury fund, which launched in 2024 and has since expanded across multiple blockchains. By mid-2026, it had grown to roughly $2 billion to $2.5 billion in assets under management, depending on the source, making it one of the most prominent real-world asset tokenisation products on the market. Other industry trackers said the on-chain real-world asset market had passed $50 billion by March 2026, highlighting how quickly the sector has moved from experiment to scale.

BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink has repeatedly argued that tokenisation can widen access to markets and modernise how assets are held and transferred. The company has also said it expects private markets and technology to account for more than 20% of long-term revenue, a notable projection for a group that for years relied overwhelmingly on index funds and public-market products.

The strategy is not confined to BlackRock’s own balance sheet. By the end of 2025, the firm was managing nearly $80 billion in digital asset exchange-traded products and backing more than $65 billion in stablecoin reserves, according to figures cited in industry reports. That puts it at the centre of an increasingly blurred boundary between traditional finance and crypto infrastructure.

Recent moves in the market suggest the concept is gaining institutional traction. Ondo Finance recently unveiled a tokenised stock model built to fit within existing US securities rules, using BlackRock’s iShares Core S&P 500 ETF and shares in Micron Technology as part of the structure. The project relied on Broadridge for shareholder communications and Oasis Pro as transfer agent, pointing to a model in which tokenised exposure is layered on top of familiar regulatory plumbing rather than replacing it outright.

BlackRock’s longer-term challenge is regulatory as much as technological. Its vision depends on retirement plans and insurance portfolios being allowed to hold tokenised private assets at scale, and on market infrastructure evolving to support those products safely. The choice of blockchain networks will also matter, because institutional liquidity tends to follow the venues where large issuers decide to launch.

For now, BlackRock appears convinced that tokenisation is not a side project but part of the operating system for its next era of growth. The company’s message is that the future of asset management may be less about a single product category than about building a bridge between public markets, private assets and the blockchains that can carry them.