Blackstone said the pace of redemptions at its flagship private credit fund had slowed, after investor concern over potential losses led to a surge in customers seeking to withdraw their money this year. Blackstone and rivals, including Apollo Global and Blue Owl, earlier this year limited investor redemptions from some credit funds, with clients withdrawing capital over fears of rising losses from loans to heavily indebted technology groups. Jonathan Gray, Blackstone president, said they are seeing a material deceleration in redemptions, but it is early in the third quarter, referring to the Blackstone Private Credit Fund, known as Bcred.

Bcred, which has $45bn in net assets, raised just $1bn in new equity in the three months ended June 30, a drop of about 70 per cent from this time last year. Gray noted muted new investment into Bcred, while large institutional investors continued to pour money into the firm’s other private‑credit funds. Blackstone reported stronger than forecast second‑quarter earnings, with distributable earnings, a metric favoured by analysts as a proxy of its cash flows, at $1.52 per share, an increase of 26% from the same period last year, surpassing forecasts. The gains were fuelled by large investments in data centres, energy infrastructure and tech companies Space X, Anthropic and Open AI.

While performance profits from Blackstone’s credit funds all but evaporated, its infrastructure, private equity and hedge fund units reported gross gains of more than 3.6 per cent. The New York‑based firm’s once‑embattled retail property fund, Breit, attracted $1.2bn in new investment, its best fundraising quarter in four years. However, Blackstone’s broader property investment arm reported stagnant performance and some flagship funds saw their returns dip. Gray linked the results to the strategic bet on AI and AI infrastructure, arguing there is no bubble because counterparties are the biggest, most profitable companies in the world and there is an acute shortage of computing power.