BlackRock is the world's largest investment management firm, with $14 trillion in AUM. BlackRock's business spans ETFs, institutional asset management, private markets, and technology services. BlackRock's iShares is the world's leading ETF provider with $5.5 trillion in ETF AUM, offering index-tracking and active ETFs across equities, fixed income, commodities, and digital assets. BlackRock manages $6.2 trillion for institutional clients — pension funds, insurers, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments — across active and index strategies. Through recent acquisitions of GIP, HPS Investment Partners, and ElmTree, BlackRock has built a top-5 alternatives platform with over $675 billion in client assets spanning infrastructure, private credit, private equity, and real estate. BlackRock earns revenue primarily through base fees charged as a percentage of AUM, supplemented by performance fees, securities lending, and technology subscriptions. BlackRock also operates Aladdin, a proprietary investment and risk management platform sold to external institutional clients on long-term subscriptions, generating roughly $2B in annual technology services revenue. BlackRock's key growth priorities include expanding private markets distribution into the wealth channel, converting active strategies into ETF wrappers, growing Aladdin through acquisitions like Preqin, and embedding private markets into target date funds for the 401(k) market. Most of BlackRock's cost base is relatively fixed, so revenue growth from rising markets or net flows falls disproportionately to operating income.