Barry Sternlicht and Jonathan Pollack

Jonathan Pollack marked a full year this spring as president of Starwood Capital Group and chairman of Starwood Property Trust. One of his major goals for Starwood, harnessing the immense data at the firm’s fingertips, was executed in tandem with a busy fundraising year.

“It’s been a really exciting year in terms of that shift from headwinds to tailwinds,” said Pollack.

Over the past 12 months, Starwood’s flagship opportunity fund completed new investments totaling more than $1 billion in transaction value. In July, Starwood reported a record final closing of the fund with commitments of $10.2 billion, raising its assets under management to roughly $130 billion. Its private debt funds, too, closed loans representing more than $3 billion in gross commitments.

Barry Sternlicht said he and Pollack have worked well together “because we’re both intellectually curious.” Both of them are understandably curious about the full impact of artificial intelligence.

“I like to tell everyone we’ve never been more excited and more terrified,” Sternlicht said. 

Their answer to uncertainty: diversification. Starwood deployed $12 billion of capital over the past year, including $6 billion in commercial real estate lending and $2 billion in infrastructure lending. Throughout 2025, Starwood’s in-house capital markets team completed roughly $44 billion of financings across more than 200 transactions. 

Starwood especially broadened its global data center footprint, notably spearheading the take-private of ESR Group, one of the largest data center operators and developers in the Asia-Pacific region.

But Starwood isn’t immune to turmoil. Increasing withdrawal requests and a soft pricing environment drove the firm to temporarily suspend most redemptions in its $22.4 billion Starwood Real Estate Income Trust. 

In combining their decades of experience, however, Sternlicht and Pollack are confident about Starwood’s future. 

“You’ve got to find the right opportunity, the right distressed asset, the right bankrupt borrower who needs capital, and you’ve got to pick your lanes … to figure out where you can get outsized return for underwriteable and hopefully modest risk,” Sternlicht said. “I think, for the first time in years, we feel pretty good about that, and we’re trying to execute behind that.”