Blackstone is ramping up the use of AI across its operations to deliver quicker and better decisions for clients, and accelerate staff development, its European boss says.
Speaking at the first Real Estate: UK annual conference in London this month, James Seppala outlined the global asset manager's history of investing into AI-related assets, such as infrastructure, power and data centres.
But he said Blackstone was now increasingly focused on its adoption of the technology more widely across the business and in its work with clients.
"As a firm, in terms of AI adoption and accelerating some of our own thinking, that is happening across Blackstone as a firm; in terms of making better decisions, making faster decisions, in terms of adapting more quickly, more fluently to this world we are in, as well as our businesses," Seppala said.
He added: "Within Blackstone businesses in Europe, [they] manage or oversee and work with about 25 real estate portfolio companies across Europe.
"We spend a huge amount of time in partnership with those management teams, making sure that we are all pushing as much as we realistically can [for] AI adoption and ensuring that it helps us make real-time decisions and make those decisions better."
"...we are all pushing as much as we realistically can [for] AI adoption..."
Seppala also insisted AI was not "at all" impacting the way Blackstone approaches recruitment, with it using the technology to accelerate junior staff's involvement in decision making.
He said: "The amount of hours I spent in the first five years of my career and more, doing fairly senseless tasks and just pushing things through without thinking about it... it was a significant proportion of time. I suppose I learnt something but, could I have learnt more quickly? No question.
"What we are trying to make sure is that we can relieve our team from tasks that are not going to speed their development and speed our decision making.
"You could spend more time actually thinking about what you are trying to achieve as opposed to having relatively more junior members of that team [being] purely task-orientated.
"You are going to make them better professionals and they are going to have a more enjoyable experience... and they will be developing into better professionals and they can actually contribute more to the decisions we are trying to make."
His comments come as PwC's 2026 AI Global Jobs Barometer research showed last month that AI adoption is "compressing" the traditional career ladder, with overall early-career job postings "flatlining" in highly AI exposed sectors.
The paper adds companies' increasing AI adoption is heightening the need for junior staff to develop senior skills, such as leadership and strategic thinking, earlier on in their careers, with the technology removing "basic, repetitive tasks" from entry-level roles.
Seppala, who was speaking to RE:UK delegates also spoke about Blackstone's confidence in the European real estate market.
He said the group was the most positive it had been in years following a "huge reset" in the cost of global capital. The Blackstone boss added the firm was seeing a "go-forward" look in the markets, providing its businesses with confidence.
Seppala also said the UK would remain and "number one or two market" for the asset manager in Europe, as he described London as a "truly global" city. Specifically he said logistics would continue to be one of its three main conviction areas in Europe.
"Logistics, I think we have been strong [there] for many, many years in Europe, this continues to be the most active sector for us in terms of the amount of transactions we are committing to on a monthly basis, a sector where we can see really strong occupier demand fundamentals, where we see significant cash flow generation, and we also see disposal access, where we see really strong liquidity."
He also listed the hospitality and leisure sector as well as the living sector, "with some nuance", as its other priority areas. He listed "affordable, single-family, multi-family, student housing" as the four large sub-sectors it was likely to engage with.
Seppala was speaking days after prime minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham delivered a speech in Manchester, when the MP for Makerfield outlined his ideas for the nation. In that speech Burnham said the country was in a "housing trap" and suggested he would deliver more social housing.
National newspapers have suggested that the future PM is an advocate for introducing rent controls. Seppala told delegates that a "total lack of supply" was an acute issue for the UK housing market as well as further afield.
He highlighted solutions to the housing crisis with RE:UK chief executive Vanessa Hale, who chaired the session. Seppala said: "I think the only way that can be addressed is to maximise the amount of capital and the nature of capital that is focused on that sector, in order to buy product from developers and developers to have the debt pathway that they need.
"I think that everybody in this country is aware of that and, we have seen the nature of capital focused on this sector in the UK broaden reasonably significantly over the last 12 to 24 months, and you would be surprised if anybody did not want to see that continue."
Seppala also answered questions on Blackstone's focus on sustainability as the UK experienced its second heatwave of the summer, insisting the issue was "unchanged and totally front of mind" for European real estate investors and tenants.
He said this was because sustainability related to property values, arguing that Blackstone has a responsibility as fiduciaries to preserve and manage the capital it manages.
"Sustainability has to be critical when you are think about asset management because it goes to broadly the universal occupiers that you can attract to whatever particular property that you are [responsible for]; it goes to the financability of that real estate; and it goes to broadening the universal potential buyers for that real estate," Seppala said.
"In many cases, there is a real-time ROI on that investment, in terms of, if you are able to put solar panels on warehouse rooftops, there is an ROI on that capital spend... or the value of the multiple you assign to that particular asset, so it is totally core to what we do as fiduciaries for the capital.
"We are not seeing any real shift in that as managers or frankly as we interact with the market in terms of occupiers and buyers," he added.
