BlackRock’s $400B private-markets pivot: BUIDL AUM, $80B in crypto ETPs, and the L1 liquidity question

BlackRock has put a number on its post-ETF growth phase: $400 billion in gross private-markets fundraising by 2030, a target the firm set on June 12, 2025. The on-chain footprint already backing that ambition includes a tokenized treasury fund that scaled to roughly $2 billion to $2.5 billion in AUM by mid-2026, alongside nearly $80 billion in digital asset exchange-traded products and backing for more than $65 billion in stablecoin reserves by the end of 2025.

Three deals, one infrastructure stack

The fundraising target rests on three completed acquisitions rather than organic ETF flows. Global Infrastructure Partners, folded in during 2024, gives BlackRock direct exposure to physical infrastructure assets. HPS Investment Partners, acquired in 2025, adds private credit origination and equity deal-flow capacity. Preqin, also acquired in 2025, supplies the data layer needed to price and distribute those strategies at scale.

Each acquisition plugs a specific gap: assets, credit sourcing, and data — the three inputs required to move private markets from institutional-only allocation into wealth and retirement channels. BlackRock is packaging the resulting products as “evergreen and semi-liquid structures” for those distribution channels.

BUIDL as the tokenization proof point

BUIDL, launched in 2024 on Ethereum before expanding across multiple chains, is the clearest working example of BlackRock’s tokenization thesis in production. Its AUM growth to the $2-2.5 billion range by mid-2026 is the metric management points to when linking private-markets expansion directly to blockchain rails, rather than treating tokenization as a side experiment.

CEO Larry Fink has explicitly tied further private-markets growth to tokenized products, with real estate, credit and infrastructure named as the next asset classes for on-chain wrappers. The firm’s 2026 Private Markets Outlook frames this as a “new continuum” between public and private asset classes rather than two separate businesses.

Revenue math and the liquidity-routing risk

BlackRock expects private markets and technology combined to eventually generate more than 20% of long-term firm revenue. Insurers, wealth-management platforms and retirement plans are the named buyer base for these products — a distribution shift that moves tokenized assets from crypto-native allocators into mainstream institutional balance sheets.

The plan’s single largest dependency is regulatory: retirement accounts and insurance portfolios need explicit clearance to hold tokenized private assets at scale before the $400 billion target becomes reachable. There’s a secondary structural implication worth tracking on-chain — whichever blockchain networks BlackRock selects for future tokenized launches could become default venues for institutional liquidity, with knock-on effects for layer-1 valuations depending on which chains BUIDL and its successors settle on.

Read more: Securitize Rides BlackRock Backing as Tokenized Asset Market Eyes $80B

Sources

• cryptobriefing.com