Blackstone (BX) CEO Stephen Schwarzman said Thursday that his firm has been selective in its investments in the AI infrastructure boom as the company delivered a jump in profits for the second quarter.
The private markets giant reported Q2 distributable earnings of $2 billion, or $1.52 per share, up 26% from a year earlier
That compared with analyst expectations of $1.7 billion. In a post-earnings conference call, Schwarzman, the firm’s 79-year old billionaire CEO, pointed to Blackstone’s earlier investments in data centers, energy, power and AI companies as the most significant driver of the results. But he cautioned that there are also plenty of uncertainty in the rapidly expanding AI boom. “In terms of risks, we’re mindful of the potential for excessive exuberance in this area, and we’ve carefully chosen our spots, leveraging our scale and knowledge advantage to build conviction,” he said.
Schwarzman added that AI will have as great an impact on society as the commercialization of electricity and the industrial revolution but that it will come faster and with more complexity. “Major change of this type also creates anxiety due to the uncertainties of how the technology will evolve,” he said. “We will need to monitor these developments as a society and course correct when necessary.” Blackstone clinched a series of big AI-related deals in the second quarter. Its credit and insurance business launched a $35 billion investment platform with Broadcom and Apollo Global Management (APO) that aims to lower the compute and power costs for training AI models. (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance is owned by Apollo). In May, the company also launched a AI cloud provider in partnership with Google parent Alphabet Google (GOOG, GOOGL).