It's fun. Like, a lot's to talk about. It's been exciting. How've you been? I've been going skiing Christmas years. We're supposed to go out to Oregon, Mount Bachelor.
Oh.
I heard really good things because it's supposed to get snow early. I'm like, "All the snow's in Vermont, which we never go to.
Exactly.
All right, so we're just, like, fucked. We're gonna be hiking. Oh, no. No, I know. It's a total crapshoot, but.
Sorry.
yeah. [audio distortion] .
Oh.
[audio distortion] or a T-shirt next time.
Okay. Wonderful. Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. We're gonna get started. It's my pleasure to introduce Martin Small, CFO of BlackRock, the largest global asset managers with $13.5 trillion in assets under management. Despite its size, BlackRock remains one of the fastest growing companies in the asset management space, with plans to still double the business by 2030. The firm is well on its way there with organic base fee growth accelerating to high single digits so far in 2025. Early signs of success from the recently closed acquisitions in private markets and a sharper focus in driving positive operating leverage. So lots to discuss. Welcome back, Martin. Always great to see you.
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Yeah. Thanks for being here. Why don't we start with a question on organic base fee growth? Not surprisingly, it's an important metric for you guys and the one that you really train the market to key in on. BlackRock's delivered 8% organic base fee growth so far, or call it over the last 12 months or so.
Mm-hmm.
exceeding the 5% plus, so really leaning to that plus part.
Mm-hmm.
With a few weeks left in 2025, how's Q4 organic base fee growth trending and what are your early expectations for next year?
Great.
It's wonderful to see everybody. Thanks again for having me, Alex. And I know these things don't organize themselves, so thank you to you and all the staff for putting together such a great session. I would characterize 2025 as one of these eye-watering, like, white-knuckle roller coaster experiences for investors, like level five whitewater rafting. I mean, you had Liberation Day. Do you remember Liberation Day?
Oh, yeah.
Liberation Day, sharp equity market declines. I think for the first time in quite a while, we had questions about U.S. exceptionalism. We actually had international equities outperform U.S. equity markets by, like, 10 percentage points. Does anybody remember those days? Right? We had gold, a hunk of rock on a 30-year horizon, outperform the S&P 500. We've had saber rattling on tariffs, trade, taxes, like real geopolitical tensions, the largest CapEx boom in history. I mean, this was a big year, and so I'm really excited. Everyone at BlackRock is very excited about delivering one of the strongest years in terms of organic base fee growth that we've seen, in the history of the company. We're sprinting into the end of the fourth quarter here, which is seasonally the strongest for us. We've had five consecutive quarters of five, 5% organic base fee growth or higher.
We've been running, as you mentioned, at 8% organic base fee growth over the last nine months. We closed the HPS transaction early in the third quarter, so that's given us a boost from here, kind of on the forward growth trajectory, so we're excited about it. To me, what really stands out, though, is BlackRock's strategy has always been about the whole portfolio. It's about breadth in products and services. It's about serving every corner of a client's portfolio with excellence. I'd argue to you it's not just about the 8% organic growth over the last months. It's about the quality of that and diversity of that organic growth. Our top contributors to organic revenue growth are really diversified. It's our systematic franchise. It's private credit. It's cash. It's OCIO. It's active ETFs. It's models.
We're really seeing a lot of breadth in the business in terms of growth engines. It's not just capabilities that we've had for decades. It's new capabilities that we've built in the last two years, as well as capabilities that we've acquired in the last two years. That's what we're looking for: these structural growers that have a lot of tailwinds behind them, that we can get deep in serving client portfolios. For the fourth quarter, we've seen about $100 billion of iShares flows so far through last Friday, the 5th of December. That's about $450 billion of iShares flows through the year. That would make for an annual record. We're number one in asset gathering in iShares ETFs globally, as well as the number one organic revenue grower, three times bigger than any of the other issuers or the next largest issuer.
So the fourth quarter's shaping up well. We've continued to see good deployment in our private markets franchises. We've had about $16 billion through the third quarter and a very good pipeline in the fourth quarter. We made a previous announcement about our mandate with Citi's private wealth business.
Yes.
Which is about $80 billion of inflows, which should hit here in December. We're very excited about helping Citi grow its private wealth business, leveraging the best of BlackRock portfolio solutions. So we expect that to be a strong contributor to organic revenue growth in the fourth quarter. As we look out to 2026, Alex, we built the business around these structural growers, right? It's SMAs, models, systematic equities, private markets, Aladdin, cash, digital assets. We see those growth rates really pulling through. So we think, you know, as I mentioned at Investor Day, it's five plus with a real emphasis on the plus. I think we can more consistently generate six per you know, 6% or 7% organic base fee growth, with these engines really firing the way they have been.
If we get some positive market tailwinds and good structural, I think, support, we can do even better than that. The thing that I really track is if you look at the fee yield on new money to the firm, if you look at the fee yield on our organic revenue growth.
Mm-hmm.
It's running six or seven times higher than our fee yields were running in 2023.
Wow.
And so long as we're pulling up that fee yield on new money, over time, it'll pull up the average fee rate of the firm. And that's our whole strategy, that we talked about at Investor Day of going from about $20 billion of revenue to $36 billion of revenue by 2030, doubling operating income, doubling the market cap of the firm. What it implies is basically pulling the fee rate up, you know, again, what seems like three, you know, three basis points.
Yeah.
But on the magnitude of this asset, that's, that's very meaningful. But we're very focused there on delivering high-value strategies that command, those fee levels that are above the average fee rate of the firm.
Great. Well, that's really helpful, color, both for the near term and kinda as well as how you think about 2026. Let's talk about expenses and margins as well, for a couple of minutes. The margin story has been maybe a little bit more noisy recently. You guys had a number of deals, that kinda created a little bit of funny P&L dynamic. So one, I was hoping you could just walk us through your latest thinking for CFOs.
Yeah.
Love it when you say funny P&L dynamic.
Yeah.
[audio distortion].
Yeah.
Funny little orange.
My orange jumpsuit out.
You know.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's good.
yeah.
So fair. Fair point.
Fair point.
Fair point. So when we think about the sort of core G&A trajectory for the firm, into 2026 and longer term, help us kinda level set what that looks like on a sort of pro forma basis, you know, pro forma for the funny noise of the.
Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. So I think through the lived experience of the management team and working with clients over a very long horizon, we've developed, I think, a good acumen about how to invest in the business through market cycles to optimize organic growth and create a lot of scale. BlackRock has continuously delivered industry-leading margins. We aspire to deliver margins, adjusted operating margins of 45% or greater, with our margin on recurring fee-related earnings running even higher. We've managed to do that, and do that, I think, fairly consistently. When we announced the transactions, with HPS and GIP and Preqin, we were already delivering a steady adjusted operating margin expansion. And GIP and HPS are over 50% FRE margin businesses, so they've been net accretive to our fee-related earnings.
And we continue to see that, you know, pull through in how we're building the business. That's in addition to the businesses we have that have a lot of scale in them already: ETFs, highly scaled business.
Sure.
SMA, highly scaled business. Digital assets, highly scaled business. Our systematic equities and systematic businesses, highly scaled franchises. So when I think about the FRE growth trajectory of the private markets business, the highly scaled franchises that we see in the traditional platform, we really have that ability, I think, to continue to drive margin expansion and profitable growth for shareholders. On the expense side, we've talked a lot about our systematic budgeting framework for how we invest the operating expenses of the firm. In particular, we've talked about the financial rubric, and that's just basically a set of rules for how we think about systematically investing the expense base. The basic principle is to align organic revenue growth and controllable expense. Align organic revenue growth and controllable expense. By controllable expense, I just mean salaries and benefits and G&A.
Salaries and benefits and G&A. Those are the expenses that we control. And so keeping them aligned, ultimately with organic growth means that with stronger markets behind us, we'll have more of that beta that's driving revenue, drop into operating income, creating operating income growth, and creating more operating leverage, for our clients, as well as our shareholders. You see that strategy pulling through, I think, very much in action. If you were to look at margins, in the third quarter, excluding the impacts of performance fees and related performance comp expense, our margin on fee-related recurring fee-related earnings was 46.3%. That's up 110 basis points over a year- over- year. So we really see that ability to continue to drive operating margin expansion, in the business through scale, and the financial rubric.
When you think about the cadence, I guess, of overall margin expansion.
Yeah.
Just to double-click on that, I think you guys are at around 44% margin or so so far for the year.
Mm-hmm.
If you kinda look at where consensus, etc., 45 plus really doesn't seem that heroic based on the things you just described, even, you know, assuming, like, somewhat normal level of market returns, right? As you think about more of, like, an annual margin expansion trajectory on your way to that 45 plus, what does that look like over the next couple of years?
Yeah. I think we continue to target that 45% Adjusted Operating Margin. Keep in mind that that's a fully burdened with stock-based comp.
Comp.
You know, margin. Where I really see the ability to continue to drive margin expansion is in the private markets and scaled businesses.
Mm-hmm.
like ETFs, systematic equities, etc., where I really think we see that margin on fee-related earnings being able to drive up towards those trajectories of the best of the best, the best-in-class private markets names north of 50%.
Yeah. I gotcha. Great. Okay. Let's pivot to some of the businesses, starting maybe with the institutional channel and given the, given your size and just the global reach. Would love to hear your perspective on this. One of the themes we've seen recently, perhaps most pronounced with CalPERS announcement recently, kinda moving from Strategic Asset Allocation to a Total Portfolio Approach.
Mm-hmm.
It feels like that plays well into what you guys have established, but curious if you hear more institutions following their path. What does it mean for the market? What does it mean for your ability to source assets?
Yeah. So I would, I'd put in a small plug here for my colleagues at the BlackRock Investment Institute, who just last week released their 2026 market outlook. But one of the things that the BII group has talked about is just that, markets are changing so rapidly. These mega trends that are driving markets, whether it's AI CapEx, whether it's geopolitical fragmentation, whether it's changes in demographics, have really changed the way investors need to think about building long-term portfolios. For generations, institutional investors have been doing Strategic Asset Allocation. Every three to five years, either themselves or through a consulting firm, they do extensive studies. What have been the historical risk and return assumptions and volatilities for international equities, for high yields?
They look at them and say, "Well, these are expected returns." They build a portfolio ultimately that's on an asset class silo basis. They put it together, and hopefully when you combine it, it meets the long-term required output for their asset-liability management purposes. But, you know, imagine doing an asset allocation, Alex, like, that's three to five years old right now.
Yeah.
Like, we did all the study. I mean, three to five years ago, there were no large language models. There were no advanced GLP-1s. Like, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour was not affecting regional GDP. Like, you know.
Or the betting markets.
Right. And like, imagine, every three to five years, we study what the expected returns are in capital markets. And I think what you've seen is this move away from SAA, from traditional long-term Strategic Asset Allocation, to this idea of a Total Portfolio Approach.
Mm-hmm.
Which is basically to set a single reference benchmark and a set of risk budgets, and ultimately to be more nimble about accessing sources of risk and return. And it's interesting you flagged CalPERS made a big announcement about this. There's a study that's referenced actually in the CalPERS press release about adopting TPA. And it talks about that study has 26 other very large institutional investors that have also moved to a TPA approach or something similar, which are about $6 trillion of asset allocators in the world. But I want you to think about, like, TPA changes the way investors and I think kinda asset managers have to talk to each other, so it's not a conversation about what does this asset class do. It's about what's the role of this asset class in a portfolio.
How does it affect all of the other parts of the portfolio performance? Or even more complicated, TPA actually contemplates, for example, Equity Exposure Equivalents, like EEEs, right? What's an EEE? Well, it's things that have equity-like characteristics that on a relative basis, a CIO might say, "I like that to fill up my equity exposure and my equity risk in TPA," rather than buying outright equities. And I've seen, you know, we've seen certainly places like down in credit where.
Mm-hmm.
Perhaps some of the risk-return on a relative basis has some principal protection, like in a junior capital structure.
Mm-hmm.
But has equity-like upside. So thinking about EEE, Equity Exposure Equivalents, it's like an entire new language. It has profound, I think, impacts for how asset managers and asset owners talk to each other, for how they dimension risk, and ultimately how they, I think, access capital. If you were to actually go Google beyond that press release, you know, what CalPERS has done, you'd actually find that a lot of Aladdin risk models are being used to calculate those EEEs and other ALM models for CalPERS on the TPA, on the Total Portfolio Approach. So I think this is a really important, profound change in how investors build portfolios. But I also think that it's a huge opportunity for firms like BlackRock, where we have tools and technology and data combined with kind of a language of whole portfolios.
We've always talked to clients about whole portfolios and how adding a particular risk exposure affects the outcome of the whole portfolio. I think there's lots of asset managers that are excellent in their vertical, in their sphere, but they've never really had to be whole portfolio conversers before, and that's a really big deal. TPA to me, like, if you wanna be a great firm dealing with asset owners that do total portfolio allocations, you need to be an integrated asset manager with financial technology across public and private markets. I really think BlackRock was built for TPA.
Yeah. No, certainly feels like that. Okay. Let's turn to some of the bigger growth engines for the firm, and obviously some of the recent acquisitions starting with HPS and private credit. There's been a lot of narratives in the market over the last couple of months related to all things private credit, even though the actual tangible evidence of a broad-based deterioration in credit has been pretty minimal, at least so far. So, one, hoping to get an update from you on how integration with HPS has come along. And two, given what we've learned so far, what are they seeing on the ground in terms of underlying credit trends across their private credit exposures? How are they changing, if at all, the way they monitor credit exposures given some of the recent issues?
So, we closed our combination with HPS Investment Partners in July. We've been closed about five months. I think we're already seeing really excellent synergies and really excellent opportunities as a combined firm that are better than we could have ever seen on our own. Five months together, I'd say five big workflows that are happening across the firm. The first of which is bringing together all of the origination, all of the relationships across banks and corporates to really widen out that funnel. If you're a credit investor, you wanna see everything. You wanna see everything. You don't wanna do everything.
Mm-hmm.
But you wanna see everything, and you wanna be global. And I think the team at HPS, that's come to BlackRock would tell you the funnel, the pipeline is at least twice as big by bringing together the BlackRock relationships, across corporates, across sovereigns, across banks. So I think that's been a real win. And over time, you know, including so far, will help us with deployment, will help us earn attractive risk and returns for our clients. I think the second set of workflows has really been trying to scale this asset-based finance and high-grade business with insurance companies. We have about 20 SMAs that are in the middle of various states of becoming operational, and we expect to see some of that pull through in 2026 in terms of base fee growth. The third is private markets to wealth.
HPS has some real flagship strategies, including the flagship, non-traded BDC HLEND, but we're really building out the product agenda there, sort of five to seven products, I think, in the United States, somewhere three to six, in Europe, and then taking advantage of what is a very big BlackRock distribution network, particularly in places that HPS hasn't traveled as much, like the RIA network.
Mm-hmm.
Or independent broker-dealers, where we at BlackRock have big business, big business. I think the fourth thing is really, you know, technology has been very exciting, including private credit capabilities in Aladdin. And for sure, I'll tell you, the Aladdin team has been focused on building out excellent private credit capabilities. Having another set of world-class practitioners to really shape and engineer the platform has been, you know, very exciting. And otherwise, all things pulling the firms together, cultural, real estate, all that stuff going very, very well. So we're very excited, you know, five months in, five great workflows going on.
I think on credit conditions, if you were to chat with the team, the first thing we'd start by saying is, you know, both BlackRock and HPS have a heritage that is steeped in rigorous underwriting, in making sure that we understand the risks that we're signing up to for our clients. Our clients expect us to generate attractive risk and return, in these markets, and of course, to protect their investments, and their principal. I would separate out what we read in the headlines. I think any industry that's had strong growth attracts, you know, some degree of appropriate scrutiny in terms of things that are going on. And so I think the growth, of private financing markets across direct lending, asset-based finance, and beyond, have grown right alongside the growth of the private markets, and they're going to attract appropriate scrutiny.
But I think when you really start to look at fundamentally what's happening in the marketplace, the headlines don't really match what we see. So I think broadly speaking, if we looked at the universe of BDC loans, $400 billion or so, 17 or 20 thousand loans that are sitting in the independent valuation databases, we see non-accruals basically consistent with historical norms. We see PIK as a percentage of total income in line with historical norms. We see recovery rates that are in line with historical norms. Now, like, the promise of private credit is not that there will never be defaults.
Right.
Right? These are below investment-grade direct lending businesses. There will be defaults. The hope is that they are navigated better, that the recoveries are better, that they're ultimately managed better, but when I look at the environment that we've come through, we've come through an environment that's had very, very benign defaults, so if you look at levered loans to private equity companies, we've been running at 1%-2% kinda default rates. Through the cycle, normal default rates might be 3%, you know, 3%-4%. If we were to look at, you know, single- B loans in the syndicated loan market, the long-term single- B default rates 3%-4%. We saw low teens defaults in the global financial crisis, so I'd expect to see.
Yeah.
Some catch-up in default rates from here. Like, even moving to the historical norms of 1%- 2%-4 %, ultimately implies a doubling of the default rates, you know, from here. What I do think we see that's interesting, and we have our eyes on is if you look at some of the independent, kind of loan databases as well as looking through our own portfolios, I think you're starting to see some stratification between much smaller companies.
Mm-hmm.
Like a $0-$50 million EBITDA company looks very different than a $100-$200 million EBITDA company, both in terms of the ability to generate earnings. So we've seen in 2025, the bigger companies are growing EBITDA 10%. Smaller companies are actually shrinking in earnings. If we look at covenant defaults.
Mm-hmm.
For example, not monetary defaults, covenant defaults. Smaller companies are having more covenant defaults than larger companies. It makes sense. Where I think the HPS teams have focused very consistently over the years is in larger companies. You know, the weighted average EBITDA in the HLEND portfolio is about $250 million.
Mm-hmm.
I think similar to what you hear, you know, from some of the other, kinda large private credit providers. You know, where we'd expect to see some more of the credit stresses are in the smaller companies that have a more difficult time navigating trickier economic cycles versus larger companies have more ability to weather some of these economic cycles. But ultimately, like, that I think that's good for this marketplace, being able to separate out those that have done good underwriting, those that can manage to recycle, that ultimately, I think, allows you to distinguish your performance from others. I think kinda coming through what's been a very benign default environment, ultimately, you know, this will be the cycle where I think the best firms get to distinguish themselves on performance.
Yeah. It's pretty consistent with what we're seeing for what it's worth.
Yeah.
Let's pivot to private markets for wealth for a couple of minutes. You mentioned HPS obviously has two flagship products that can sort of stand on their own two feet, and we've seen them grow really nicely. You just mentioned that your plan to expand the product lineup a little bit. Maybe talk to us a little bit about what you're thinking in terms of new products.
Mm-hmm.
Whether it's in credit or perhaps other parts of the ecosystem. Do you have enough capabilities to do that internally? We've seen, obviously, you know, folks launch products, whether it's in private equity or in secondary. You have, you know, less capabilities there.
Yep.
How are you thinking about the holistic approach to private wealth?
Yeah. So I'd start by saying, you know, both BlackRock and HPS historically have, you know, strong heritages in the wealth space. I'd say HPS has really been geared towards the private bank space. At BlackRock, we've built a very, very large wealth business across the United States and in Europe and in Asia, built on the back of the ETF business, on the mutual fund business.
Sure.
The SMA business. We have a big liquid alts business. We have the largest wholesaling team in the industry, out covering every corner of the U.S. marketplace, and a very strong relationship with the thousands of private banks in Europe, that ultimately drive a lot of the discretionary flow. Number one, we're going to bring HPS in an appropriate controlled way, across all those channels to you know, increase fundraising. Investment performance comes first. It's the license to go raise capital. So the idea isn't bring it everywhere and try to raise as much money as possible. It's to make sure that you're gearing your fundraising, with what you believe you can deploy at the right levels of returns. That said, we see an opportunity to really widen out, you know, the product funnel here.
And the goal, I think, would be in the United States, to be developing a family of retail alts funds and access vehicles, that go beyond the flagship HLEND and some of the junior capital solutions. But imagine an H series family of funds.
Mm-hmm.
An H series family of funds that is led by the flagship HLEND, has junior capital, real assets, triple net lease. We have some existing vehicles that we've been retooling, like CREDX, which is a multi-strategy credit interval fund, that we've had the HPS team repositioning that I think is gonna be a really attractive multi-strategy credit product. We have a primary secondaries and co-invest vehicle, BPIF, the BlackRock Private Investments Fund that I think can really become a secondaries and co-invest vehicle that's interesting to take these platforms. But the idea would be to create a family of funds, a family of funds at somewhere between five and seven.
Mm-hmm.
That's an H series, that ultimately I think we can bring in a very coordinated way, so that you have basically all of the building blocks, that would serve an advisor to have a multi-alt multi-alternatives portfolio, and then second, the idea would also be to start scaling those through our models business. We have $450 billion of SMAs and managed models at BlackRock. So again, just being able to achieve 10% penetration there in terms of being able to use some of these products in the models would allow us to improve the quality of those portfolios while also being able to leverage the asset base to drive the growth of a retail alts business.
That makes sense. That makes sense. Where are you in the build-out of these additional products? Is that likely gonna be a 2026 event, 2026 launch? Or is that gonna kinda start?
That's a 2026 launch. I think you'll start to see kind of real assets and triple net lease kind of in the first half of next year. And then obviously kinda HLEND is out in the marketplace today, and junior capital and other exposures are places that we can bring as well.
Yeah. Let's talk about the 401(k) opportunities while sort of related to the, to the wealth ecosystem, but particularly, with respect to the target date fund solutions. As a major DCIO manager with both, robust passive and obviously now private capabilities, you guys clearly have the right to win, as that market continues to develop. What's the plan in terms of launching LifePath target date funds with allocation to privates? I think that's a 2026 event, but maybe spend kinda what you doing to build up into that. And, you know, what do you expect adoption curve and pricing to ultimately look like for these kinda products?
I have worked in this space, my whole career, in asset management, and I can tell you that we have seen more progress on this topic of private markets into 401(k), basically in the last year than we've seen in the last 20.
Yeah.
We haven't seen such seismic changes in this space since the Pension Protection Act in 2006, and I think it's really exciting. The president's executive order directing the agencies to make progress on private markets to defined contribution was signed in August. It has about a six-month timeline to start showing some actions. So that puts us in call it February. Let's call it Q1.
Mm-hmm.
Of 2026 where you'll start seeing some action. I'm involved, along with many colleagues, in a whole array of industry groups, and working with the SEC and the Department of Labor, and I can tell you there's really high-quality people doing this, you know, in Washington, D.C., who are very thoughtful and very mindful of the outcomes, and there is real work being done. There is a draft model legislation for a safe harbor for what is the process a plan sponsor has to go through in terms of product selection, monitoring, and the like in order to fulfill the duty of loyalty and prudence required by the regulation.
Sure.
There is model legislation and actual legislation that's been introduced in the House of Representatives in order to reform pleading standards in ERISA. The Department of Labor has been filing amicus briefs and certain types of litigation to start showing how it could ultimately influence courts on pleading standards and litigation. So like, there is real activity happening here.
Sure.
Not just press releases about things that can be done. And so at BlackRock, as you mentioned, Alex, you know, we're the number one DCIO provider in the market. We run about $500 billion plus of target date strategies. More than half the assets that we manage at BlackRock, over $13 trillion of assets, more than half the assets we manage are for retirement accounts. So this is top of mind for us and top of mind for our clients about basically how to bring what's always worked in DB, right? Like, if you were to go like, when we're talking about CalPERS and CalSTRS, those are defined benefit plans for state workers and for teachers. But why is it if you work on the assembly line for a corporate, you can't get private markets?
Right.
So what we're just trying to do is bring the DB model to DC. The way most individual two-legged creatures in the United States, you know, who work in a corporate job, access the capital markets at all is through a target date fund. The idea that they should have zero private markets exposure defies all of the Nobel research that's been done in the history of time about what it builds to be to what it means to build a diversified market portfolio. Our first foray here has been in a collective trust product with Great Gray that we're bringing to market. We have plans to bring a LifePath with privates target date fund to the market in 2026.
And then ultimately, I think over time, I do think there will be the ability to integrate into, you know, the traditional life path strategies. But all those things have to go in sequence. They all have to be done with plan sponsors, with consultants, and ultimately will require the input and approval of all those clients. That's gonna take some time. But in 2026, we'll get to market and start seeing these strategies in action. It's important that they build a track record.
Yeah.
So that when you go out to talk to consultants and plan sponsors, they're supportive and have a real lived experience. I think this is a place we can be really great and we can do good for our clients as well as do well for our shareholders.
Yeah. And now definitely a really exciting part of the market to watch. Okay. I probably have only time for one more question.
Sure.
And, you know, I'll probably wanna hit on tokenization.
Mm-hmm.
Just given the fact that Larry Fink spent quite a substantial amount of time on the last earnings call discussing this opportunity for you guys. And you, BlackRock as a whole, already touch this ecosystem a number of different ways. Obviously, there is a crypto ETF.
Mm-hmm.
Tokenized money market funds. You're the largest manager of Circle stablecoin, right? So you're already in this ecosystem. The thing that, I think a lot of people found interesting and intriguing is the way you talked about, or the firm talked about, tokenizing longer-term assets.
Yeah.
iShares, et cetera. What's the vision here? What's the commercial model? In your best guess, what does this look like 12 to 24 months from now?
Yeah. Our strategy here is just to do three things. The first of which is to bridge the traditional finance world and the DeFi world, right? The crypto world, right? That's what the IBIT ETF is. That's what the ETH is, which is to make all the crypto world accessible in the traditional capital markets. The second is to be the best stablecoin reserve manager in the industry. Today we manage, as you mentioned, about $65 billion in the Circle Reserve Fund. There's $300 billion of stablecoin out there.
Mm-hmm.
Ultimately we see the growth of stablecoin, as a big part of the growth in digital wallets. Digital assets, tokenized real-world assets are in their infancy. Tokenized real-world assets are about $36 billion, and we have the largest tokenized fund, which is a tokenized liquidity fund that invests in U.S. Treasuries and cash, that's BUIDL, B-U-I-D-L. But ultimately, I really believe that this world of digital wallets is going to be much bigger in five years. And so we want BlackRock to effectively be a digital wallet native asset manager. Like, we want to be able to manage a model portfolio of stocks and bonds and ETFs and do proposal generation and reporting and trading the same way that we would do it, in a unified managed account, in the physical world.
We're working aggressively to create long-term investment products, which is to start by tokenizing iShares, for example, and working on the workflow for how you do creation and redemption. Like, how do you mint a new token for an iShares, ultimately? I believe these markets are gonna be much bigger and having a digital wallet native asset manager that can do everything from operate mutual funds and ETFs inside the digital wallet to ultimately build client portfolios, and have them go from their cash position in stablecoin.
Yeah.
Or their cash position in something like BUIDL that's a money market fund and convert that into the S&P 500 or ETHA or Taylor Swift royalties, whatever it might be, to be able to do that natively in the digital wallet. That's where we wanna be in three to five years.
Great. Awesome. All right. Well, unfortunately, we're out of time. Martin, thank you so much.
Thank you. Thanks, Alex.
I appreciate you being here.