The chipmaker said it had struck partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to create “compute financing platforms” aimed at funding data centres, AI factories and other infrastructure required to support the rapid expansion of AI.

The USD 500 billion is not committed funding or money that has already changed hands. It represents the potential amount the platforms could mobilise over time, with the companies having signed memorandums of understanding and final agreements still to be concluded.

At the heart of the initiative is Nvidia’s attempt to establish its graphics processing units (GPUs) as an investable asset class. The company argues that its chips are widely used, transferable and capable of generating predictable economic returns, allowing lenders to provide financing against the hardware.

“In AI, compute is revenue,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said, describing computing capacity as a critical form of infrastructure.

Goldman Sachs said its role would include creating a market for credit backed by Nvidia compute, effectively allowing the chips to serve as collateral for loans.

The move comes as technology companies pour unprecedented sums into AI. Major Nvidia customers, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic, have collectively spent more than USD 1 trillion on AI projects and infrastructure over the past three years, with spending expected to rise further.

The new financing could help AI companies and cloud operators build more data centres and acquire the chips needed to power increasingly demanding models and services.

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In June it moved towards technology, transport and hospitality firms holding intellectual property and VIP client data. By July the crosshairs had narrowed onto private equity firms, law firms and financial ratings agencies, organisations sitting on merger documents, capital deployment plans and live litigation files.

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While investments in most private equity, private infrastructure, private real estate and private credit traditionally have been dominated by institutional investors like pension funds, asset managers are now looking to challenge the monopoly by increasingly offering their services to people seeking better returns on their personal wealth.

“One of the new vehicles, the WVB All Markets Fund, will blend public equities, fixed income and index strategies and Blackstone’s private markets offerings, while the WVB Blackstone All Privates ⁠Fund will give access across Blackstone’s platform,” the companies said in a statement.

WVB All Markets Fund will be the multi-asset solution for investors who want to simplify the integration of public and private markets.

“The fund will integrate Wellington’s expertise in active public equities and Vanguard’s strengths in active fixed income and index strategies with exposure to Blackstone’s leading perpetual private markets platform. The fund will trade under the tickers WVBIX, WVBAX, and WVBMX,” the alliance remarked.

WVB Blackstone All Privates Fund, on the other hand, will serve as a professionally managed solution providing a simple access point to Blackstone’s leading perpetual private markets platform, putting private equity, private infrastructure, private real estate, and private credit in a single bracket.

“The new closed-end funds will be available at launch to Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank clients, providing advisors on one of the industry’s leading wealth management platforms with access to the first solutions from the strategic alliance. The alliance also anticipates broad participation and adoption from the RIA community and will explore additional distribution opportunities across the wealth ecosystem over time,” the companies added further.

“Our clients are increasingly seeking broader access to private markets and thoughtful ways to implement these strategies over time. Our scale and integrated platforms are expanding access to differentiated investment opportunities that can support more resilient long-term portfolios,” said Mark Sutterlin, head of alternative investments at Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank.

The solutions will help advisors build more diversified portfolios for high-net-worth and mass-affluent clients in a simplified investment framework. The funds have been tailored to assist advisors in constructing long-term portfolios that seek strong performance, long-term growth, and broad portfolio diversification.

Elaborating more about the product, the allinace said, The WVB All Markets Fund and WVB Blackstone All Privates Fund bring together Wellington’s nearly 100-year heritage of active management, fundamental research, and multi-asset allocation expertise; Vanguard’s 50-year legacy of delivering high-performing active strategies and index funds with a relentless focus on cost efficiency and investor outcomes; and Blackstone’s 40-year track record of cycle-tested performance and leadership position as the world’s largest alternative asset manager and number one provider of private markets solutions for individuals.”

“The launch of the WVB All Markets and WVB Blackstone All Privates Funds reflects the strength of our strategic alliance with Vanguard and Blackstone. By combining our deep active management and asset allocation capabilities with Vanguard’s scale and expertise in fixed income and indexing and Blackstone’s leadership in private markets, we are delivering thoughtfully constructed solutions designed to meet investors’ evolving needs. We are particularly pleased to introduce these funds initially through the powerful Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank platforms,” said Jean M. Hynes, CEO and Managing Partner, Wellington Management.

“For five decades, Vanguard has worked to improve investor outcomes through disciplined active management, low-cost index strategies, and a client-focused approach. Through this collaboration with Wellington and Blackstone, we are extending that mission into integrated public and private market solutions. Launching these funds with Bank of America Private Bank and Merrill is an important first step in expanding access to those solutions,” remarked Greg Davis, President and CIO of Vanguard.

“Blackstone has delivered performance in private markets for individuals for more than two decades, helping them access the premium returns, lower volatility, and diversification that private markets can provide. These new solutions bring together the performance and scale of Blackstone’s private markets platform with the exceptional strengths of Wellington and Vanguard, creating simple and comprehensive access for advisors and their clients to help build long-term wealth,” concluded Jon Gray, President and COO of Blackstone.

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The fundraising, apart from reflecting the growing and strong investor interest in Asia, also comes amid the geopolitical volatility created by the ongoing Iran war. Apart from Blackstone, Sweden-based EQT AB also benefitted from the positive investor environment, as it, in May 2026, raised USD 15.6 billion to create Asia’s largest private equity fund.

Blackstone, while targeting USD 10 billion for the fund named ⁠”Blackstone Capital Partners Asia III,” ended up raising more than double the amount of its previous investment vehicle.

Asia has been gaining from the trend of global institutional and high-net-worth investors diversifying away from the United States due to high valuations, inflation risks, and overall geopolitical uncertainty. Markets like Japan and India, known for offering a steady pipeline of buyout and growth opportunities, have been a major focus area for global asset managers.

“Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing region in the world, presenting compelling opportunities ‌to ⁠invest at scale behind our high-conviction themes and deliver for our investors,” said Joe Baratta, global head of Blackstone Private Equity Strategies.

Bain Capital recently raised about USD 10.5 billion in its sixth pan-Asia buyout fund, while KKR & Co., which, in 2021, raised the record amount of USD 15 billion for its pan-Asia fund, is now reportedly looking to collect USD 15 billion for its next such vehicle.

Talking about Blackstone’s Asia-related activities, since 2024, the alternative asset management giant ⁠has invested more than USD 7 billion in 12 deals in India and Japan, including companies such as Indian AI cloud platform Neysa and Japan’s engineering ⁠services provider TechnoPro. The firm also exited 15 companies during the period, including through listings of the International Gemological Institute and Aadhar Housing Finance, along with Japan’s Alinamin Pharmaceutical.

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In this backdrop, International Finance asked Javier Corominas, the Chief Global Strategist at Oxford Economics, what is going wrong with the industry.

Javier Corominas has over 20 years’ experience in asset management as a strategist, portfolio manager, and independent macro researcher.

In an exclusive interview with International Finance, Javier Corominas spoke about whether the private credit industry will go through a 2008-like meltdown, how funds and investors can go past the crisis, and most importantly, whether the sector requires urgent reforms.

The private credit sector has been undergoing a sort of upheaval, with companies like Carlyle, Ares, and Apollo restricting investor withdrawals. Are we going to witness a major financial meltdown in the coming days?

Javier Corominas: Our view is that we are in the early stages of a rolling crisis in private credit rather than an imminent, acute financial meltdown of the 2008 variety. The stress is real and building: Carlyle’s $7 billion Tactical Private Credit Fund reported redemption requests totalling 16% of its shares in Q1 2026, with the fund capping withdrawals at 5%, and Apollo and Ares blocked investors from getting even half of the money they wanted out of their funds — a sign of mounting strain.

However, a Lehman-style meltdown in the coming days is unlikely. Our research estimates a further cumulative 5–10% drawdown over the next two years, a painful but gradual process. The main reason a sudden systemic event is improbable is structural: private credit represents only about 3% of total US household and business debt outstanding. The 2008 crisis became systemic because bank runs and the collapse of interbank lending markets turned a bad asset class into a global catastrophe. Without a heavily leveraged, interconnected banking system sitting on top of the losses, the path to systemic crisis is far narrower. The greater risk is a slow-motion erosion—particularly through the insurance channel—that is harder to detect in real time and more difficult to reverse.

Investors are on a withdrawal spree, as concerns over loan quality, liquidity constraints, and high exposure to the software sector, threatened by AI, have arisen. What is your take on the issue?

The withdrawal spree reflects a convergence of legitimate fundamental concerns and sentiment-driven momentum. Our note is explicit that the market’s concerns are well-founded: BDC NAV gaps have materially decoupled from high-yield OAS spreads since Q3 2025, which is difficult to explain by macro factors alone and strongly suggests the stress is endogenous to private credit. The three drivers — loan quality deterioration (48% of borrowers with ICRs below 1.0x in the 2023–24 vintage cohort), liquidity mismatch in semi-liquid fund structures, and AI-related software sector exposure — are all genuine.

That said, there is also a self-reinforcing dynamic at play. The opacity of private credit portfolios amplified concerns: media stories about rising redemptions fuelled additional redemption requests in a feedback loop resembling a modern bank-run dynamic. Blue Owl’s redemptions grew each of the past three months, meaning that the blended quarterly rate obscures more acute panic more recently, suggesting sentiment is deteriorating, not stabilising.

Private credit’s high portfolio exposure to the software sector has emerged as a worry. Due to AI-related disruptions, software stocks have been on a freefall. How can funds and investors wade through the crisis?

Our note estimates 25–35% of private credit portfolios face elevated AI disruption risk, concentrated in legacy SaaS firms with seat-based pricing and business services firms facing automation headwinds. For funds and investors navigating this, several frameworks are relevant.

Funds should accelerate portfolio triage—distinguishing legacy SaaS borrowers (seat-based, back-office automation-vulnerable) from AI-beneficiary software businesses. Marks need to move proactively rather than with the usual lag: as long as redemption pressures remain contained and assets are not forced into the market, the system appears robust. However, once constraints are tested, the gap between reported and realisable values may become evident, revealing vulnerabilities that had previously been obscured.

For investors, the practical framework is: favour senior secured structures, hard covenants, and managers with enforcement playbooks; inventory redemption mechanics and gate provisions; demand disclosures on back-leverage and valuation governance. The era of ’allocate to private credit and forget’ is over. Manager selectivity and active monitoring are now the minimum standard.

Blue Owl, the worst-affected due to the crisis, had significant portfolio exposure to ’internet software and services companies’. Is this a cause for concern for private capital funds?

We think more than 70% of Blue Owl’s loans are to software companies, which makes it an extreme case. But the lesson for the broader industry is directional: funds that grew rapidly during the low-rate era by specialising in a single sector have now discovered that concentration risk in private credit is asymmetric—the illiquidity premium was supposed to compensate for higher selectivity, not lower. Broader funds are not immune.

A section of experts and analysts is comparing the private credit mess with the pre-2008 financial crisis environment. Do you agree with them?

The comparison has genuine merit on some dimensions but is ultimately imprecise in ways that matter. The parallels we draw are valid: excessive capital chasing a structurally limited opportunity set, compressing spreads, deteriorating underwriting standards (48% of 2023–24 vintage borrowers with ICR below 1.0x), rising PIK penetration, covenant erosion, and opaque valuations.

The key structural differences that make a 2008-style meltdown unlikely: private credit funds carry significantly lower leverage than the investment banks of 2007; and the contagion mechanism — through insurers rather than banks — is slower-moving but ultimately more insidious, manifesting as a grinding erosion of retirement security rather than a sudden liquidity freeze. Our view is that the comparison to 2008 is useful as a qualitative warning, but should not be taken as a prediction of timeline or mechanism.

The ongoing crisis has wiped billions of dollars from the valuations of some of the biggest investment managers. Does the industry need structural reforms?

Yes, and several reform vectors are now in motion simultaneously.

The reforms that would address the structural vulnerabilities most directly are: mandatory standardised portfolio disclosure (closing the gap between stated and actual sector exposures), stricter valuation governance, and more rigorous capital treatment for insurance-sector private credit holdings, including offshore reinsurance structures (the ’Bermuda Triangle’ we note). Whether these reforms are forthcoming in the current US regulatory environment is an open question.

US life insurers have accumulated nearly $1 trillion in private-credit investments. Should the insurance sector brace for the impact?

Unambiguously yes, and this is the transmission channel that most mainstream commentary underweights. We identify this as the primary propagation mechanism. Private credit now accounts for around 35% of total US insurer investments and close to a quarter of UK insurer assets, with PE-affiliated insurers holding an estimated $1 trillion in assets through these channels.

The growing use of Rated Note Feeder SPVs to ’optimise’ regulatory capital treatment, and the ’Bermuda Triangle’ strategy, where PE-controlled platforms originate annuity books, reinsure liabilities to affiliated offshore vehicles, and invest heavily in private credit—structures that maximised carry and capital efficiency in benign conditions but could force de-leveraging precisely when markets are under stress.

The downstream exposure falls on US pensions and retail savers holding life annuities—products that are, by design, long-duration, illiquid, and dependent on insurer solvency. This is the channel through which private credit stress, even if not systemically acute in the traditional sense, could meaningfully erode household retirement security.

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Blackstone acquired a 70 percent stake in Guangzhou International Airport R&F Integrated Logistics Park from Guangzhou R&F Properties. The deal is expected to improve Blackstone’s logistics portfolio in China as well as in the Southeast Asian region. In recent times, Blackstone has made a series of logistics acquisitions in the region.

The logistics park is located 15 kilometres from the Guangzhou airport and it is home to tenants that include logistics providers such as SF Express and YTO Express and ecommerce giants such as Tmall and JD.com. The facility is host to some of the top mainland corporates including China Mobile, China Unicom, Sinopharm and China Resources Pharma.

In regard to the logistics opportunities in the Greater Bay Area, Cliff Chen, a Shanghai-based managing director with Blackstone Real Estate told the media, “The Greater Bay Area is rapidly emerging as a financial, technology and transportation hub and one of China’s biggest logistics markets. Our scale, expertise in logistics, and the support of dedicated teams on the ground enable us to drive our plans for the park’s future growth including constructing additional cold storage facilities and institutional-quality warehouses to cater to rising demand.”

Last month, Blackstone acquired a British logistics portfolio from Prologis for £473 million, making it the country’s largest industrial real estate sale on record.

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The Japanese Pharmaceutical company has been reducing its assets all over the world in order to refocus its business as well as reduce its debt.

Blackstone was not the only investment fund bidding for Takeda Pharmaceutical’s OTC business in Japan, reportedly, other investors such as Bain Capital, CVC Capital Partners, and Taisho Pharmaceutical also placed their bids.

Takeda is looking to sell Takeda Consumer Healthcare for around $2.85 billion by the end of the month, Kyodo News reported.

Talks between both parties are in the final stage and the two companies plan to settle the deal by the end of this month.

Last year, Takeda acquired Irish drug making company Shire for around $59 billion, making it the largest-ever Japanese acquisition of a foreign company.

Earlier this month, Takeda also announced that it would produce and sell in Japan a novel coronavirus vaccine being developed by US biotechnology firm Novavax.

The deal between the firms allows Takeda Pharmaceutical to undertake the local production and commercialisation of NVX‑CoV2373 in Japan, which will be backed by funding from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW).

With regard to this, Takeda Pharmaceutical global vaccine business unit president Rajeev Venkayya told the media,  “Nothing is more important right now than protecting the world against COVID-19. We are excited to collaborate with Novavax to bring their promising vaccine candidate to Japan.

“Today’s announcement builds upon our ongoing support of pandemic preparedness and demonstrates Takeda’s commitment to the health and well-being of the Japanese population.”

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The state-owned insurance group was one of the most aggressive buyers of foreign assets. The company has spent around $30 billion over the years on foreign asset acquisition. But currently, the insurer is speeding up its asset disposal process. Anbang previously paid Blackstone $2.4 billion for the assets in 2017, which was Japan’s biggest property deal since the global financial crisis.

Blackstone, a US-based equity giant is also bidding for Anbang Insurance’s portfolio of US luxury hotels business which is also up for sale. Private equity firms such as Brookfield Asset Management, Mirae Asset Management, SoftBank-owned Fortress and also Blackstone have put in bids up to $5.8 billion. According to reports, 17 potential buyers have placed their bid for the multibillion-dollar US luxury hotel portfolio which includes JW Marriott Essex House in New York, Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in Los Angeles, Westin St. Francis in San Francisco and the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

However, reportedly South Korea’s Mirae Asset Financial Group has emerged as the potential buyer and is working on the terms for the purchase of the insurer’s 15 luxury hotels.

Blackstone is also seeking a buyer for a portfolio of 82 blocks of flats in Japan which is estimated to be worth $1.5 billion. JLL and Mizuho Trust & Banking have been appointed by Blackstone as advisers for the sale. According to reports, the portfolio contains 4,500 apartments in ten cities across the country, with the majority located in Tokyo and Osaka.

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The deal also includes debt, where Blackstone will take in $8 billion in net debt. With that, the acquired assets will be divided into two different units which will be controlled by the US group.

The transaction was announced on Sunday. After the sale, GLP will invest its efforts in expanding its presence in China, America, and Europe.

Global investors are spending billions of dollars to acquire companies in the logistics sector. One reason for the accelerated acquisitions is because of the growing demand in e-commerce.

Ken Caplan, global co-head of Blackstone Real Estate, said, “Logistics is our highest conviction global investment theme today, and we look forward to building on our existing portfolio to meet the growing e-commerce demand.”

In 2017, Blackstone sold its European warehouse firm Logicor to China Investment Corporation $13.8 billion. The deal allowed Blackstone to strengthen its presence in China.

Blackstone’s real estate business was founded in 1991. Anthony Myers, Blackstone’s Head of Real Estate Europe, said, “We built Logicor through over 50 acquisitions to be a premier pan European logistics real estate company. It will now have an excellent new long term owner.”

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