Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, is betting that U.S. reindustrialization will accelerate demand for warehouses, which has waned in the wake of pandemic growth.
Nadeem Meghji, the New York-based firm’s head of global real estate, said government trade policies could bring more manufacturing capability that will require industrial property. He added that his firm is also focused on industrial real estate used for data centers that support artificial intelligence.
Speaking at the University of Miami’s annual real estate impact conference, Meghji said warehouses and data center property account for a significant portion of the firm’s total global real estate holdings. Blackstone is reportedly looking to establish a publicly traded company to buy data centers, providing small investors a way to put money into AI-related developments.
The firm has around $140 billion of data centers globally, Meghji said, and about the same amount of development potential “based on the land that we hold.”
In the fourth quarter of 2025, Blackstone reported an 8.4% return from its private equity infrastructure business, the biggest gain among all its segments. QTS, one of the world’s largest data center providers, is part of that portfolio.
“We think we’re still in the early days of that build-out, and we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity ahead there,” he said.
Warehouses present an exciting opportunity, Meghji told the audience, saying that while many already understood the demand driven by e-commerce in the segment, “the other theme is the reindustrialization of the U.S., all of this infrastructure build-out that we’re seeing actually drives demand for warehouses.”
He added that “the warehouse business is poised to accelerate.”
The United States is the firm’s biggest “destination” for its investment, he said.
Tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon are expected to spend nearly $700 billion in AI infrastructure build-out, according to a report by CNBC.