Blackstone Inc., an alternative investment management company, has raised $30.4 billion for its Blackstone Real Estate Partners X fund, which focuses on opportunistic deals in industries like rental housing, hospitality, and data centers.
Blackstone Real Estate Partners IX, which closed on $20.5 billion in 2019, saw the final close of its tenth iteration of its global real estate strategy (BREP X), raising roughly 50% more funds than it did. The company attributes this success to its ability to offer customers attractive investment returns, with the BREP series having produced internal rates of return of 16% over the past 30 years.
When announcing the final conclusion of BREP X, Blackstone notes that its real estate division has moved away from asset classes including traditional offices and malls because of the growing difficulties these asset classes face as a result of changes in the economy.
Instead, the company, which manages $326 billion in investor capital globally, is concentrating on industries that offer greater yields, with about 80% of its portfolio currently made up of assets including data centers, lab offices, rental housing, and logistics.
According to Ken Caplan, global co-head of Blackstone Real Estate, they have made some of their best investments in periods characterized by the market volatility and dislocation we see today.
Furthermore, sector selection has never been more critical as they witness the bifurcation of performance within real estate, which is favoring our high-conviction themes.
In November 2022, Blackstone entered the data center business in Asia with a plan for two large hyper-scale data centers in India with a combined capacity of 600 MW.
