ANNOUNCEMENT

Larry Fink Joins Leaders at the Energy and Innovation Summit in PA

Jul 15, 2025
  • BlackRock
Larry Fink sits on a panel at the Inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit

On July 15, 2025, BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink joined business and government leaders at the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh, hosted by Senator David McCormick. The Summit convened senior leaders across industries to discuss the infrastructure, energy, and investment required to unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence and drive a new era of American economic growth.

During the event, Fink sat down for an exclusive on-air interview with CNBC Senior National Correspondent Brian Sullivan. In their conversation, Fink described this moment as a "golden age" for infrastructure investing and emphasized BlackRock's focus on mobilizing capital to fund next-generation infrastructure—particularly the energy systems and data centers that will power an AI-driven economy. “We believe there’s a need for trillions of dollars of investment in infrastructure related to power grids, AI, and the whole digitization of the economy,” Fink said.

Larry Fink: I think it's enormous and we made a strategic study in 2023 and this is why we did these three acquisitions. We did GIP, we believe infrastructure is just at the beginning of a golden age and I'll get into that. We believe private credit will continue to grow and evolve we did HPS but also we believe that if you're going to be… if you believe there's going to be a melding between public and private markets, which we believe that's going to happen…

Brian Sullivan: What does that what does that mean?

Larry Fink: …meaning portfolios are going to have both private markets and public markets there's a possibility that the government, the US government is going to allow in defined contributions more private markets into DC but the foundation that is going to be is data and analytics so we bought Prequin, which is the smallest of the three deals, but it could be as impactful that any of them in terms because I think more and more people are going to need analytics and data to justify the blending of public and private together in a portfolio so we look at all three as a major component of our long term strategy. Related to infrastructure we believe that there is a need for trillions of dollars investing in infrastructure related to our power grids, AI, the whole digitization of an economy we are still going to be investing in decarbonization so all these different investments

Brian Sullivan: they go together don't they

Larry Fink: they all go together plus making sure that we have adequate dispatchable energy so all of this is all part of a plan and we only had one target when we determined we needed to get even larger in infrastructure and that was GIP and since we announced the transaction and generally at a time when you have this confusion of a merger, clients paused, but we announced also today that GIP was able to close a $25.2 billion infrastructure fund, GIP5, which was the largest third party infrastructure fund ever raised.

Brian Sullivan: that's a big number, 25 billion

Larry Fink: then on top of that…

Brian Sullivan: how fast was that, how long did it take to build 25 billion I mean what is it

Larry Fink: over a year

Brian Sullivan: between friends that's a short time for that amount of money, you said when I mentioned GIP we're at the golden age of infrastructure investing, what does that mean?

Larry Fink: It means that we're going to have to do more and more public and private investing. I do believe deficits have consequences and I've been discussing with this administration and many other governments that we need growth to reduce the dependency of our deficits. If we don't have economic growth around 3% our deficits, our federal deficit are going to overwhelm the economy in the future so the only way to get out of it is growth. We're going to grow and this is one thing about what we're doing here in Pittsburgh related to doing more public and private and that's what you know Senator McCormick's announcing here today in Pittsburgh, but much of it has to do with working with private capital, unlocking private capital, accelerating permitting processes to get more things done and so we believe the golden age of infrastructure investing is just beginning. We announced last year we're in the midst of a $30 billion raise for specifically for infrastructure around data centers and AI and you know our partners NVIDIA, Microsoft xAI, MGX of Abu Dhabi and we announced now we have the Kuwaitis as a big investor, as we announced Singapore’s Temasek will be a big investment this fund. We are in the midst of raising this full $30 billion of equity. Now once we start putting projects in the ground we're going to have to raise probably another $100 billion of debt and so this is just the beginning, and this is why I think the magic of BlackRock and GIP was so dramatic.

Brian Sullivan: But here's the dirty little secret of it, let's say NVIDIA we're not picking on NVIDIA amazing company right $4 trillion market cap. NVIDIA can build all the chips at once for data centers Larry and you can build all the data centers that we want.

Larry Fink: we need energy

Brian Sullivan: we need energy, but we also need the last mile, we need a powerline that goes from the energy’s source to the energy user that is largely state regulatory issue, right, federal, state - there's only so much BlackRock can do about that. But how do we fix that

Larry Fink: So that I think you know this is where President Trump's administration with Secretary Burgum is really important. They have an office now within his remit to streamline permitting, it doesn't matter which state it is to try to accelerate permitting. Obviously you have federal government permitting then you have state and local permitting as you suggested. This is really important to unlock and if we can't unlock that we're not going to grow. If we're not going to unlock this it's going to be harder and harder to build out these AI data centers. These AI data centers could be represented as much as one gigawatt of power as you know

Brian Sullivan: or more

Larry Fink: or more

Brian Sullivan: by the way that's again about 750,000 average sized homes just cause these numbers are weird

Larry Fink: I think it's enormous and we made a strategic study in 2023 and this is why we did these three acquisitions. We did GIP, we believe infrastructure is just at the beginning of a golden age and I'll get into that. We believe private credit will continue to grow and evolve we did HPS but also we believe that if you're going to be… if you believe there's going to be a melding between public and private markets, which we believe that's going to happen…

Brian Sullivan: What does that what does that mean?

Larry Fink: …meaning portfolios are going to have both private markets and public markets there's a possibility that the government, the US government is going to allow in defined contributions more private markets into DC but the foundation that is going to be is data and analytics so we bought Prequin, which is the smallest of the three deals, but it could be as impactful that any of them in terms because I think more and more people are going to need analytics and data to justify the blending of public and private together in a portfolio so we look at all three as a major component of our long term strategy. Related to infrastructure we believe that there is a need for trillions of dollars investing in infrastructure related to our power grids, AI, the whole digitization of an economy we are still going to be investing in decarbonization so all these different investments

Brian Sullivan: they go together don't they

Larry Fink: they all go together plus making sure that we have adequate dispatchable energy so all of this is all part of a plan and we only had one target when we determined we needed to get even larger in infrastructure and that was GIP and since we announced the transaction and generally at a time when you have this confusion of a merger, clients paused, but we announced also today that GIP was able to close a $25.2 billion infrastructure fund, GIP5, which was the largest third party infrastructure fund ever raised.

Brian Sullivan: that's a big number, 25 billion

Larry Fink: then on top of that…

Brian Sullivan: how fast was that, how long did it take to build 25 billion I mean what is it

Larry Fink: over a year

Brian Sullivan: between friends that's a short time for that amount of money, you said when I mentioned GIP we're at the golden age of infrastructure investing, what does that mean?

Larry Fink: It means that we're going to have to do more and more public and private investing. I do believe deficits have consequences and I've been discussing with this administration and many other governments that we need growth to reduce the dependency of our deficits. If we don't have economic growth around 3% our deficits, our federal deficit are going to overwhelm the economy in the future so the only way to get out of it is growth. We're going to grow and this is one thing about what we're doing here in Pittsburgh related to doing more public and private and that's what you know Senator McCormick's announcing here today in Pittsburgh, but much of it has to do with working with private capital, unlocking private capital, accelerating permitting processes to get more things done and so we believe the golden age of infrastructure investing is just beginning. We announced last year we're in the midst of a $30 billion raise for specifically for infrastructure around data centers and AI and you know our partners NVIDIA, Microsoft xAI, MGX of Abu Dhabi and we announced now we have the Kuwaitis as a big investor, as we announced Singapore’s Temasek will be a big investment this fund. We are in the midst of raising this full $30 billion of equity. Now once we start putting projects in the ground we're going to have to raise probably another $100 billion of debt and so this is just the beginning, and this is why I think the magic of BlackRock and GIP was so dramatic.

Brian Sullivan: But here's the dirty little secret of it, let's say NVIDIA we're not picking on NVIDIA amazing company right $4 trillion market cap. NVIDIA can build all the chips at once for data centers Larry and you can build all the data centers that we want.

Larry Fink: we need energy

Brian Sullivan: we need energy, but we also need the last mile, we need a powerline that goes from the energy’s source to the energy user that is largely state regulatory issue, right, federal, state - there's only so much BlackRock can do about that. But how do we fix that

Larry Fink: So that I think you know this is where President Trump's administration with Secretary Burgum is really important. They have an office now within his remit to streamline permitting, it doesn't matter which state it is to try to accelerate permitting. Obviously you have federal government permitting then you have state and local permitting as you suggested. This is really important to unlock and if we can't unlock that we're not going to grow. If we're not going to unlock this it's going to be harder and harder to build out these AI data centers. These AI data centers could be represented as much as one gigawatt of power as you know

Brian Sullivan: or more

Larry Fink: or more

Brian Sullivan: by the way that's again about 750,000 average sized homes just cause these numbers are weird

Fink also joined a high-profile panel discussion, "Powering the AI Revolution," moderated by Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer of Alphabet and Google. He was joined by fellow CEOs from ExxonMobil, Bechtel, and Anthropic, along with U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. The panel explored how AI is reshaping the demands placed on national infrastructure, and how private capital will be key to meeting those demands. Fink spotlighted BlackRock’s AI Infrastructure Partnership as a prime example of how the private sector is stepping up to accelerate innovation.

Later in the day, Fink participated in a roundtable with Senator McCormick, President Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and senior leaders from America’s top technology and energy companies. The roundtable focused on aligning public and private efforts to ensure the U.S. remains a global leader in AI innovation and energy resilience.

BlackRock’s participation in the Summit reflects its commitment to driving the transformation of global infrastructure and helping our clients capitalize on long-term investment opportunities that support American innovation, energy security, and job creation.