Blackstone’s private equity fund for wealthy investors posted its strongest monthly performance since launch in May, driven by its exposure to artificial intelligence company Anthropic, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Class I shares in Blackstone Private Equity Strategies, known as BXPE, returned 4.3% net in May, taking year-to-date gains to 11.4%, according to an investor letter. The fund also deployed more than $2.5bn in the second quarter, including further investment in Anthropic and a new investment in payments group Stripe.
BXPE said it is seeing a more constructive exit environment, helped by increased IPO activity, including SpaceX’s public listing, which it expects to support realisations across the portfolio.
The performance comes as alternative asset managers continue to target private wealth investors as a major source of capital. Blackstone manages more than $310bn in private wealth assets across its platform, although parts of the market have faced pressure this year from elevated redemption requests in retail-facing private credit funds.
BXPE has flexibility to invest around 30% of its net asset value in deals outside Blackstone’s institutional private equity funds, allowing it to back companies linked to AI and assets it may want to hold for longer in perpetual capital vehicles.
Alongside Anthropic, the fund has invested in OpenAI, AI infrastructure business CoreWeave and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Since its 2024 launch, BXPE Class I shares have returned 19.1%, according to the letter, after generating a 20% net gain last year.
