All right, good morning, everyone. Welcome to our next section here at Barclays Global Financial Services Conference. I'm Ben Budish . I cover the U.S. brokers, asset managers, and exchanges, and for this next fireside chat, I'm really delighted to have Michael Chae, CFO at Blackstone. Michael, thanks so much for being here.
Ben, nice to be back. Nice to see you.
Likewise.
Thanks, everybody.
Maybe just to kick it off, can you talk about your current macro view? What are you seeing? How do you think the environment shakes out over the next six to 12 months?
Sure. Look, overall, despite some obvious cross-currents, we see the U.S. economy as really quite resilient. That's been reflected, I think, in corporate earnings in general and certainly in our own portfolio. I'd say on the positive side, what we see are the twin engines that we see really powering this right now are, first, the cost of capital, broadly speaking, coming down, continuing to come down. And second, this really unprecedented investment boom in the sort of AI, AI infrastructure, and power and electrification ecosystems, which we have a lot of exposure to. On the cost of capital side, obviously, the 10-year is hovering around 4%. You've got, obviously, a central banking sort of posture that is increasingly accommodative, both with respect to short rates and also, I think, management of the balance sheet.
And then from a spread standpoint, whether it's the liquid high-yield markets, IG markets, leveraged loan markets, spreads are sort of a decade-long tight. And then on the CapEx boom side, we know these stats, but this year, I think AI-linked spend, tech CapEx, has been a bigger contributor to GDP growth and consumption. So that's pretty remarkable. And I think kind of overlaying all this from a sort of general productivity, corporate efficiency standpoint, margin strength standpoint, I think it's a very constructive environment. So overall, I think a strong corporate profit environment. You don't typically see recessions without erosion in corporate profits. And so we're, again, I think, quite constructive right now. I think in terms of where we see sort of sector weakness, we do see deceleration in sort of the lower-end consumer. You see that in discretionary spend on some leisure assets.
You see that at the lower end of the hospitality space. You see continued weakness playing through in the construction supply chain, and then I'd say some evidence of, in terms of enterprise tech spend, discretionary spend, some of that being sort of displaced by increased investment in AI spend prioritization, so that's where I'd say we sort of see some more yellow flags, but overall, a quite resilient picture, deceleration in some areas, but a lot of momentum in others, and again, the cost of capital coming down. On inflation, where obviously we benefit from having a quite rich portfolio full of data points around this that we try to measure pretty rigorously, we think the path of travel continues to be quite constructive. We do expect to see continuing signs of goods inflation, but with multiple positive offsets: decelerating shelter costs, wage costs, energy costs.
On the shelter side, we sort of say this all the time, but perennially, the government data, which is lagging, embeds like a 3.7% measure of shelter cost inflation in CPI. More real-time market rent data, both external public data and also our own internal data, has it more like 150 basis points below that, so in the low twos. And when you have CPI ex-shelter in the low twos, then you have a picture that, in a real-time basis, it's closer to target. The labor market softening, obviously, has had a lot of focus, justifiably so, in our own portfolio. We see basically labor conditions in balance and continuing to moderate, which puts additional downward pressure on inflation. Wage growth in our portfolio has dropped below 3%. Our CEOs, who we survey every quarter on this, the vast majority are not finding it hard to hire workers.
Three years ago, two and a half, three years ago, that was like 90% finding it hard to hire workers. And just in terms of just overall sort of wage inflation trends on a net basis, it's running at a quite modest level. And then, as I said, energy costs down sharply. So overall, on the macro, we think the economy hangs in there alongside rates moving lower. And that does, I think, create quite a constructive backdrop for our business.
Right. So with that in mind, what does that mean for the transaction environment, both your ability to deploy and to realize?
So we're seeing a busy fall followed by a busy late summer and really, I think, creating robust momentum into 2026. Obviously, the market sort of weathered multiple years of multiple shocks, whether it was inflation or rates, regional banking crisis, which seems like ancient history, geopolitical things, policies, policy shocks, tariffs, which has led to an unusually elongated cycle, certainly unusually elongated capital markets, transaction environment, new issue cycle. That's led, obviously, to real pent-up demand following this historical drought. If you had U.S. M&A and IPOs down like 70% over the last several years versus historical averages, we've been saying for a while that this just can't persist and that it will normalize. And we think that's happening now.
And so we see sort of the recipe in place for real resurgence and activity with multiple ingredients: healthy economy, declining cost of capital, better regulatory environment for M&A, equity markets, obviously, near all-time highs, greater business confidence. And so we are seeing this translate into accelerating transaction activity. For the market overall, in terms of announced and completed M&A and IPO volumes marketwide, I think quarter to date, that's up somewhere between 35%-50% year-over-year based on the measure. That's albeit over quite depressed lows. That's for the market. For us, in terms of deployment, we've been on our front foot for a while. As of the end of June, for the prior 12-month period, we had deployed about $145 billion of capital across the firm. That was up like 43% over the prior 12-month period.
So, we, even ahead of, I think, the kind of general resurgence, were trying to get ahead of this in terms of our own view of our own constructive view of the macro and also, obviously, sort of focusing on our sort of big investment themes. And that has continued right on through. There's been no summer slowdown at Blackstone. In our private equity business, in the last 10 weeks, we've made 20 new commitments and about $11 billion of equity in our credit business. Also, in that time period, about $11 billion of new commitments. And in terms of forward indicators, our credit business, especially our direct lending business, is a pretty good proxy for the overall sponsor market. And in August, yes, we measure these things. New deal screenings in our credit area, we're up about 50% year-over-year.
So that's a pretty good forward indicator, I think, of overall transaction activity. I mean, I would just say it's just stepping back as it relates to deployment. It's really, we're in a unique spot in terms of the breadth and scale of our platform. The scale of our capital base, the breadth of it across 80-plus investment strategies, which leads to incredible, I think, cross-fertilization of intellectual capital, insights, data across the breadth of our portfolio and business, really allows us to be a strategic capital solutions provider at scale, directed at themes where we have real insight. And so I think that's more than ever, especially in terms of offering financing solutions to the real economy and to this incredible investment opportunity against these mega themes. It's really an extraordinary thing.
On the realization front, which I know is really what everyone cares about most, we do expect to see a significant pickup in realizations as the transaction backdrop resurges. That's how capital market cycles work. We have a robust pipeline of processes. We've taken public in the past two months, a company in India, a company in Europe. We're pricing an IPO this week in the U.S. Our IPO pipeline, if converted, could potentially make 2026 our largest year of issuance ever on a dollar basis. And then, as I said, M&A activity is accelerating. So if we stay on track, I think we are moving towards a real liftoff in terms of realizations in 2026.
Great. All right, let's dig into a few of the other sort of themes in the space right now. One of the newest is the potential for alternatives to be added to 401(k) plans. Can you talk a bit about how Blackstone might participate here? What are the next steps you think are required for the opportunity to start to come to fruition? And how should investors be thinking about the ultimate P&L impact?
Yeah. And you've heard this framed in different ways, but this is my favorite way. It is kind of remarkable that you have these two roughly $12 trillion retirement markets sitting alongside each other, defined benefit and defined contribution. The DB side, basically like a third allocated to alternatives with some of the most sophisticated institutions having done this for decades, seeing outperformance alongside this similarly sized DC market with virtually zero. And that's really created, and this is a very serious matter, a world of haves and have-nots in the retirement space. People with pensions, larger institutions, the ultra-high net worth have long had access to the benefit of alternatives, and the everyday investors and retirees have not. So obviously, the executive order from last month instructed regulators to provide a framework and a pathway for plan sponsors to offer funds with private market allocations.
We think it could and I think will be a real inflection point in the evolution of this market. It's a very positive and logical step towards improving retirement outcomes for millions of Americans. And again, I think the benefits are clear. The benefits are clear in terms of outperformance. Over almost every measurement period, institutions with larger allocations to alts have outperformed those with smaller or little allocation to alts by multiple hundred basis points. And then really importantly, from a diversification standpoint, when you think about retirees building retirement portfolios of assets over multiple decades, you've heard some of these stats now, including wrapped around my Wall Street Journal this morning. 90% of over 19,000 of U.S. companies with revenues over 100 million are private and not accessible to everyday investors.
And then meanwhile, the number of public companies has basically been cut in half from like 4,000 to 2,000 over the last several decades. And seven public companies comprise over 30% of the S&P 500. So again, for the vast portion of investors, everyday investors, they don't have access to this increasingly large part of the corporate economy. And that's, I think, an issue both in terms of long-term performance and also diversification. For us, we do think we're exceptionally well-positioned as a partner of choice in this area, our brand, our track record. And really importantly, we're the only firm with large-scale perpetual products across all the key asset classes with uniformly strong performance since inception. These types of perpetuals and perpetual structures are ideally suited and structured to be the vehicles to receive allocations from target date funds and managed accounts.
I think that's a very, very powerful position for us to be in that in a platform and a portfolio product that we've built for the wealth business for many years now that now, I think, is really well-positioned for this space. And in terms of financial benefits, it's obviously early. This is long-term sticky capital. We would expect it to be quite accretive over time. In terms of the opportunity set, I think the key focus, the main event, certainly over the near to medium term, will be around this professionally managed account area, most of all target date funds, also managed accounts, long-term horizons, multi-decade glide paths, highly compatible with private markets. And they're also the fastest growing part of the market. They're 40% of the market today, like $5 trillion out of $12 trillion, but they've been growing at double digits.
And they're expected to nearly triple over the next decade and be more like 60% of the market. And I think there'll be interesting ways to think about executing on this against that market through partnerships and otherwise. So look, I just say this will take time to unfold. We would counsel patience and a long view, but we see the long-term opportunity as very significant. And we would expect to be a leader in this area as well. And in terms of next steps, I mean, I think, as people know, the regulator was basically instructed to respond to the executive order within 100 days of the order. That will be followed by a public comment period. And so we await details of the implementation of the order. And we look forward to bringing the best of private markets to this area.
Got it. Maybe following up about that, can you maybe talk a little bit about your insurance model? How are you scaling private IG to keep up with demand? How do you think about the opportunity as well outside of insurance and retirement?
So in insurance, we believe our model is a winning model. We think with our model that we're maximizing the market opportunity with the lowest amount of risk. The open architecture multi-client model positions us well to address the entire $40 trillion global insurance market, not in competition with our clients. We're not taking balance sheet risk. We don't have the ups and downs that come with spread earnings, nor the regulatory exposure of owning and being an insurance company. It took us time to scale up this approach, but we think we've now hit escape velocity and that the jury is increasingly in with respect to our choice of model. I think the proof of that is in our performance.
If I said all that and we had this tiny credit and insurance business, those words would sound pretty cheap, but we've created a nearly $500 billion credit and insurance platform across the firm. And we've grown to be the largest non-captive insurance business and asset manager in private markets. We have over $250 billion of AUM, insurance AUM. That grew 20% year-over-year as of June. We have 30 strategic and SMA relationships with insurance clients. That's up from 19 a year ago. We have sort of a land and expand approach and philosophy where we win a client relationship that may be around a single strategy or product. And then we work through performance and how we manage the client relationship to expand that relationship to broaden it over time. And indeed, in the vast majority of those client situations, we've done that.
So in this area, insurance, the combination of our brand and origination capabilities is really quite powerful. On private investment grade, private IG, the expansion in insurance is obviously powering our growth in that area. We have a $115 billion private investment grade platform. It grew or was up 38% year-over-year in the second quarter. That's powered by really this growing origination engine across internal platforms, across external partnerships and flow, internal flow. And it's across a really exceptionally diverse range of strategies and asset classes within private IG, commercial and consumer finance, infrastructure finance, fund finance, transportation equipment finance, and corporate solutions. We're focused really, the whole sort of goal of this is delivering durable excess spread for our clients. And that since the beginning of 2024 has been nearly 190 basis points of excess spread versus the relevant investment grade benchmark, liquid benchmark.
And in terms of broadening the kind of client set, the activity so far has been mostly for insurers, but private wealth, other institutions outside insurance are definitely in their early days of their private credit journey and are increasingly exploring and pursuing private investment grade. And I think just broadly, once again, from a scale standpoint, from breadth standpoint, LPs are consolidating their relationships in this area like other areas to those who can provide sort of a holistic approach. And that'll favor folks like us.
Got it. Kind of along the same lines on the IG private side, your structured asset business is one of the very few firms doing anything that really can kind of compete there. Talk a little bit more about this area. How big do you think this can be over time?
I think pretty big. And it's very exciting. Private credit, just stepping back, I think is increasingly becoming a key funding mechanism for financing the real economy with very long-term capital, often at quite remarkable scale these days, including relating critical infrastructure, supporting AI and energy and power ecosystems. For borrowers, I think it's always been hard and it's getting even harder to access through the kind of traditional credit markets these long-term efficient credit solutions, particularly for complex, long-dated financings. And so that's where we sort of come in. We've spoken about recently publicly about a couple large-scale corporate solutions that we announced, Rogers Communications in Canada's CAD 5 billion financing backed by the critical wireless infrastructure assets of Rogers, where we partnered as investors with sort of Canada's most prominent pensions.
And then EQT $3.5 billion financing, where it was a financing secured by very high-quality midstream pipeline and storage assets. So as I said, these are complex, long-term solutions, can be at massive scale. And for our clients, really importantly, these transactions represent yet another avenue to access really high-quality, directly originated, long-duration assets. And so we bring together these borrowers and these investors on our very massive platform. And these financings, obviously, these credits are backed by and secured by these critical hard assets. So this is a really important, I think, development in the capital markets. And we'd expect this to be in real time, you seeing more and more of this and this being a really significant development for us and for the markets.
Maybe moving over to your wealth business. So at this point, you have the largest or among the largest products in every asset class. How do you think about room to grow from here? Is it a matter of expanding distribution, launching more products? You've got a multi-asset credit product coming, I think, later this year or next year. How do you think about sort of the optionality on growth?
Yeah, it's a very exciting sort of trajectory for us that I think is continuing. Just stepping back, as I think folks know, I think we feel like we do have a significant first mover advantage. We began raising private wealth capital like 23 years ago. We created a dedicated platform and business for this 15 years ago. Today, we have around $280 billion of AUM, the largest alternative private wealth platform in the world by far, and we got here through relentless innovation in terms of products, product development, and a commitment to delivering really exceptional client experience. To give you a sense of organizationally, we have around 350 employees globally in this area. That's up over 20% year-over-year, and about 30% of the platform assets people sit outside the U.S. For us, in terms of relentless focus, it begins and ends with returns.
And the foundation of our platform are these several large-scale category-leading products that have delivered outstanding performance since inception. So BREIT, our non-traded REIT, it's $53 billion of NAV, 9.2% inception to date returns. BCRED, our non-traded BDC, $45 billion of NAV, 10.2% inception to date net returns. And then BXPE, $14 billion in a little over a year and a half and over 16% inception to date net returns. So those are really the pillars. And it's all about performance. In terms of our distribution strategy, we obviously led this with an initial focus on products with sales concentrated in the large wirehouse area. And that remains a vital area of focus for us. But we've been expanding further regionally in terms of distribution, Canada, Japan, Europe, Australia, key geographic markets. And we've been adapting our product structures to strengthen and customize our coverage of sub-channels within wealth.
So you mentioned our multi-asset credit product. We call it BMACX. For the RIA channel, which is a real focus for that product, we implemented an interval fund structure with a daily ticker, no subdocs to really sort of tailor that product for channels and clients like that. And so look, product innovation has also allowed us, I think, and will increasingly enable us to address the mass affluent area, the retirement areas we talked about, and really expand the TAM of our overall business over time. So in terms of product growth and innovation looking forward, we do see the pace of innovation accelerating. We would expect where we sit today, the 2026, to be our busiest year in terms of the number of products launched in this channel.
I think as an important part of that, we expect multi-asset opportunities to become increasingly core drivers of that growth and innovation. Obviously, in terms of what's public, we announced our strategic alliance with Vanguard and Wellington. We announced recently our partnership with Legal & General in the UK, the developments in the DC market. So I think that's an important dimension to the growth. And we have much more planned in this area. And I would just say, if I reflect on your last three questions, Ben, we just discussed three massive markets that are just beginning to emerge really for private markets: retirement, insurance, private wealth. And for us, for Blackstone, what's so exciting is we think our advantage is brand and scale and the breadth and diversity of our business.
Everything we've worked to build over four decades will be advantages and edges that are even more pronounced in those markets, so that makes this as exciting a time as any in my fairly long career at the firm and in the firm's history.
Maybe switching gears a little bit, let's spend some time on your infrastructure business, another very large market you guys talk about a lot. Just talk a little bit about how this opportunity set has evolved and where you see it going over the next few years.
It's obviously one of the fastest growing verticals within alts. I think it was like less than $10 billion in the private markets area 20 years ago, and now it's like $1.5 trillion. Massive funding needs for projects globally means there's more opportunities than available capital. We have a long history investing in this area, initially in our opportunistic drawdown funds. But what we found when we focused on the dedicated insurance business is opportunistic drawdown funds posed a couple of challenges: a higher cost of capital relative to much of the opportunity set and a finite duration, which made it harder to match with a very long-term asset class, so we created our dedicated infrastructure strategy in 2017 as a perpetual open-ended structure. It allowed us to pursue a much broader set of opportunities and to sort of do what others can't.
Our focus to date has been very clear in terms of where we're investing on three large markets with very strong tailwinds: digital infrastructure, transportation, and power. The results, I think, have been pretty stellar. Our AUMs, $64 billion, up 32% year-over-year, driven by exceptional performance. I've said this before, but I think our growth plans and strategy in some ways parallel our real estate playbook over the last couple of few decades: geographies, channels, asset classes. We recently launched a European-focused vehicle that's last fall, that's now approaching $2 billion. We launched a private wealth vehicle at the beginning of the year that's now approaching $3 billion. We have robust momentum in the infrastructure credit area. We actually just closed raising a $5.5 billion infrastructure secondaries fund in our SP area. That's the largest infrastructure secondaries fund ever raised.
So overall across the firm, we've got about $140 billion of AUM today across various equity and debt strategies and infrastructure. And we've constructed this amazing portfolio in our equity area. We own the largest and fastest growing data center platform globally, QTS, the largest in Asia, AirTrunk, the largest private cell tower operator in the U.S. and Europe, PTI, the largest private renewables operator in the U.S., and Invenergy, the largest North American ports platform, Carrix, and the largest U.S. marina servicer, Safe Harbor. So we just love that portfolio. And I'd just say stepping back, kind of hitting a theme that I think has been resonating today, this business really does, and this area really sits at the exact intersection of the convergence of a couple of the most enormous secular megathemes and trends of our time around digital infrastructure and power and electrification.
So there's huge runway ahead for this business. And we think our team has done a really remarkable job positioning us over the last eight years since inception. And the future is very bright.
Just following up on data centers specifically, there's clearly tremendous demand for more capacity. But how do you think about things like the risk of near-term overbuild that could potentially drive down asset values?
Yeah, I think on the kind of short answer, because I know our time is short, on the demand side, every indication for us is that it's going to keep coming. And that's from talking to key players in the ecosystem. We talked to almost all of them all around the world. And then if you just forget what they're saying, if you look at what they're doing, at the beginning of the year, there's a lot of noise around, is there going to be a pullback? And I think for the four biggest hyperscalers, their plans for the year, just the year, are up 45% in that same time frame. And then on the sort of supply side, on the data center side, I would just say I think we're very comfortable.
And I think importantly, if you look at our position, I just talked about the scale of our platforms. Our models, we don't build on spec. For us, we're nearly 100% pre-leased to investment-grade tenants, obviously some of the most important companies in the world, 15-year type term leases. And then obviously, the critical constraint is on power, power and land, but really most of all power. And that really creates an advantage for those with capabilities to develop and access power at scale. And so we think we're really positioned to do that. We're pre-positioned in our platforms with very, very large land and power banks to support $125 billion plus of future data center development.
If you look at the announcement we made in Pennsylvania this summer, this $25 billion announcement and partnership between QTS and PPL, we're building both gas power plants for DCs and the DCs sort of in partnership, which I think highlights the interconnected nature of these two themes and our leadership position and how we're approaching it. So we're obviously cognizant of the concerns, but we're feeling quite comfortable about them.
Maybe moving over to your traditional private equity business, can you talk a little bit about the general appetite from LPs? You're clearly showing some early fundraising success in your latest Asia fund in particular. But how are LPs generally thinking about allocating to this asset?
Yeah, I'm glad you asked, because I think it's somewhat overlooked or underappreciated just how vibrant our corporate private equity businesses are. And while the traditional buyout business is somewhat more mature, there's still, we would say, very healthy demand for high-performing, clearly differentiated strategies. We have $165 billion of AUM in our corporate private equity business alone. It grew 14% year-over-year as of the end of the second quarter. It's expanded beyond sort of the original global flagship fund where I built my career in my early days at the firm to regional strategy sector, longer-dated strategies. You mentioned Asia. We've had exceptional performance, raised $8 billion plus to date, already meaningfully larger than the prior fund. And we expect to exceed our original $10 billion target. Our dedicated energy strategy, which has been one of the most active and best performing areas of the firm.
We're currently in our latest fund, which is $5.5 billion. We started the investment period last year, and we're already 60% committed. Our longer-dated core private equity fund, which is a $19 billion complex, very strong performance there. So that's a really great platform. We now obviously have this new growth engine that I mentioned in BXPE in the private wealth channel. And that will be a very important, very positive platform, new platform for the firm. And we benefit from sort of the power and scale of having all of these different strategies sort of be synergistic with each other as it relates to intellectual capital and just the ability to provide the largest scale solutions. I would say also just as a final note, first, I do think the largest, most diverse firms will be capable of investing at scale, offering co-invest and so forth.
We'll continue to take share among LPs as they consolidate relationships with their sort of most trusted largest GPs, and as a final note, I would say from a cyclical standpoint, the DPI concern will get better apropos of the sort of market discussion we started with, and so I think that issue will get better. And I think it's beginning to feel better, and I think we'll increasingly feel that way in 2026.
Great. Maybe just on real estate , moving over to that asset class, how would you describe where we are in the cycle? How does this impact both the existing portfolio and the opportunity for new investments over time? And what needs to happen for returns in this sector to improve?
Yeah. Look, as we've talked about, the two pillars of recovery in any real estate cycle, and certainly this one, I think are solidly in place, which is the cost of capital coming down and supply coming down. And so all-in borrowing costs in this area are down like 40% from a couple of years ago. Spreads are back below pre-liberation day levels. And construction is really collapsing around core sectors around the U.S. and around the world. U.S. multifamily and logistics starts in 2024 were down like 65% versus 2022. And that's going to work its way through into delivery. And last January, we called a bottom, but we said it wouldn't be a straight line. And since then, private real estate markets have appreciated gradually. But as I said, all the ingredients I think are present for further improvement.
Real estate values have reset and are up only about 6% from the trough, while the stock market, the S&P, is up nearly 90%. Corporate bonds are up something like 35%. So you see that sort of lagging dynamic. Look, it comes back to our portfolio construction, which, as I've said, remains to me what we've done over the last five, 10 years in this area, some of our finest work. We have a portfolio globally that's 75% concentrated in three areas: logistics, multifamily, and data centers, rental housing and data centers. BREIT itself is nearly 90% concentrated in those sectors. Cash flow growth through it all has remained very resilient. Fundamentals, as I said, are poised to accelerate. I think the Fed easing will be a potential accelerant as well.
And so with respect to deployment, where we have $54 billion to dry powder, we've deployed over $35 billion over the last year and a half, several major public to privates. Given the volatility in the public REIT markets, we continue to favor those three big sectors, starting with data centers, as I mentioned. And then outside of the big three, we are, I think, selectively focused on a few other areas: traditional office. We've screened a lot of deals. We've only done a few. But with selective assets in selective markets and then selective sub-markets within those markets at the right price and discounts or replacement cost, we are constructive. Grocery-anchored retail, that sector saw virtually no new construction really over the last decade and has maintained very healthy demand. We did this public to private in that area earlier this year.
And then in the lodging area and hotels, where we've done a lot over time, we are seeing this bifurcation in demand between the high end and the lower end. And I think that'll create some opportunity. And then on the exit side, that is still strengthening. Liquidity is clearly improving at the lower end of the market with more granular assets. There's good demand for smaller assets and portfolios. You're seeing 10-20 sort of plus kind of first round bids for these smaller assets, these kind of 100 million average sized assets. And that, again, consistent with cycles, sets the stage for larger scale exits as we head into 2026 and beyond. And then I'd say on the LP and investor side, there is more openness to allocating to Real Estate, but it's still early in the recovery of sentiment.
We've continued to have strong success in our drawdown fundraisers. We completed our fundraising of our Real Estate fund, $10.6 billion, the largest European Real Estate fund ever raised based on third-party commitments in our Real Estate debt business, BREDS, an $8 billion fund that we've raised so far. I think over double the size of the next biggest Real Estate debt fund raised in the last handful of years. And then on open-ended strategies and BREIT in the second quarter, as we said on our earnings call, we saw our best regular -way fundraising in two and a half years in the second quarter. And we raised $1 billion for dedicated core plus logistics strategies in the second quarter. So the ultimate path of travel, we think, is clear here. And we do believe we're approaching the steeper part of the recovery curve.
We do think our leadership position will be reinforced coming through the cycle as it has in the past.
Got it. We've got barely a minute left. I wanted to ask one kind of final question on your outlook. Hopefully, we can both talk fast. Clearly, the firm has been expanding its investment capabilities, the client base. Since your IPO, your AUM is up 14-fold or more, market cap's over $200 billion. How do you see this going from here over the next 5 to 10? I know it's a big question in a short amount of time, but.
In 40 seconds, I would say three things. We think alternatives and private markets are the future investment management. And it's a secular shift and mega theme that is as important as most other mega themes. We view ourselves as the clear leader and reference institution in that very exciting space. And we want to lead the evolution of the sector in the future. And we want to strive to be one of the best public companies in the world.
Very succinct. Appreciate it. Mike, thank you so much.
Thanks, Ben.
It's a pleasure to have you.
Nice to see you.