David Levine

As the head of Blackstone’s entire Americas real estate operation, David Levine helps to oversee a $314 billion real estate portfolio. 

But it’s been Blackstone’s $185 billion global data center business — which has grown from $130 billion at the start of 2026 and is the largest data center pipeline in the world — which has generated most of Levine’s attention. 

“We believe that digitization is the defining megatrend of our time,” said Levine. “Data centers are certainly where our firm has been most active companywide, and the same is true of our real estate business.”

Signature data center deals over the past 12 months include Blackstone’s $7.8 billion sale of three Northern Virginia data centers to Digital Realty in June 2026; and funds affiliated with Blackstone partnering with Related Digital to construct a $16 billion data center project for Oracle in Saline, Michigan.

“Across our entire portfolio, 15 percent of all new logistics leasing was tied to data center-related users,” said Levine. “Three years ago, it would be closer to 0 percent.” 

Levine also emphasized that Blackstone is “very bullish on logistics,” as that sector remains the firm’s largest exposure, comprising about 40 percent of Blackstone’s global real estate portfolio. 

“For a long time, what drew us to logistics was e-commerce because almost everything ordered online is stored in a warehouse somewhere,” explained Levine. “Our thesis is pretty simple: We think there’s going to be more e-commerce adoption and thus increased warehouse demand.” 

Office also remains in the cards for Blackstone. The firm acquired a 46 percent stake in 1345 Avenue of the Americas in New York City for $1.4 billion; purchased and leased with DivcoWest the entirety of 300 Howard, a 25-story San Francisco office tower, to AI giant Anthropic; and acquired 40 percent ownership in two trophy office towers near Seattle, for $545 million, which were then leased to Meta. 

“For us, we view office as really being focused on buying the highest-quality assets, in high-barrier markets, in innovation cities,” said Levine.