Companies Owned by BlackRock (2026)

What does it actually mean to say a company is “owned by BlackRock”?

BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world, and that single fact creates one of the most common misunderstandings in business. When people ask which companies BlackRock owns, they usually picture the household names whose stock BlackRock holds — and almost none of those are owned by BlackRock at all. BlackRock holds shares of thousands of public companies inside its funds, but it holds them on behalf of the investors who put money into those funds. Owning a fund that tracks Apple is not the same as owning Apple.

The companies BlackRock truly owns are a much smaller, more specific group: the operating businesses it has built or acquired and folded into its own corporate structure. These are subsidiaries that BlackRock controls as a parent, the way any large company owns the entities beneath it. That is the lens this page uses, and it is the same lens that matters when you form your own Delaware LLC — the difference between holding an investment and owning an entity is a legal distinction, and Delaware is where the largest companies, BlackRock included, anchor that distinction.

Throughout this page, every brand named as owned by BlackRock is a confirmed, closed acquisition or an internally built business. Where a company is frequently assumed to be owned by BlackRock but is not, it is called out explicitly in its own section. Anything that could not be verified is left out rather than guessed at, because an ownership list is only useful if every line on it is true.

Which brands does BlackRock genuinely own in 2026?

BlackRock’s owned businesses cluster around two themes: investment brands and technology. The clearest example of the former is iShares, the exchange-traded fund family BlackRock acquired when it bought Barclays Global Investors in 2009. iShares is the brand most people would recognize, spanning well over a thousand ETFs, and it is unambiguously a BlackRock-owned business rather than a third party BlackRock merely partners with.

On the technology side, BlackRock owns Aladdin, its risk-management and portfolio platform, marketed through the BlackRock Solutions arm. Aladdin was built in-house and is licensed out to other institutions, which makes BlackRock both an asset manager and a financial-software vendor. To strengthen that platform, BlackRock acquired eFront, a Paris-based alternative investment software provider, in 2019 for roughly $1.3 billion, and folded its capabilities into the Aladdin ecosystem.

More recently, BlackRock built out private markets through a wave of acquisitions. It completed its purchase of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), one of the largest independent infrastructure managers, on October 1, 2024. It completed its acquisition of Preqin, a private-markets data provider, on March 3, 2025, feeding that data into Aladdin. And it completed its acquisition of HPS Investment Partners, a major private-credit manager, on July 1, 2025, in a deal reportedly worth around $12 billion. BlackRock also acquired private-debt manager Kreos Capital in 2023. Each of these is a confirmed, closed deal — a business BlackRock owns, not a company it merely invests in for clients.

It is worth noticing the pattern in that list, because it is the opposite of what most people expect. BlackRock’s genuinely owned brands are not consumer names; they are infrastructure for the investment industry itself — fund wrappers, risk software, data and private-markets capability. The famous consumer companies that dominate the “what BlackRock owns” searches are almost never on the real list. That gap between perception and ownership is the whole reason a page like this has to be careful: the businesses BlackRock actually controls are specialized, deliberate acquisitions chosen to extend a single strategy, not a grab-bag of household brands. When BlackRock buys a GIP or an HPS, it is buying a capability and folding it into its own corporate tree, which is precisely the kind of control that defines ownership in the legal sense.

How are these subsidiaries held — and why does Delaware appear so often?

A company the size of BlackRock does not hold dozens of acquired businesses directly on one balance sheet. It holds them through a tree of subsidiary entities, and in the United States a very large share of those subsidiaries are Delaware companies. BlackRock, Inc. itself is incorporated in Delaware, as are the great majority of large US public companies. When BlackRock acquires a business like GIP or HPS, the US holding entities that sit above the acquired operations are routinely Delaware corporations or Delaware LLCs — a fact visible in the “Subsidiaries of the Registrant” exhibit BlackRock files with its annual report, which lists many Delaware-organized entities.

The reasons are consistent across almost every multinational. Delaware offers the Court of Chancery, a specialized business court with centuries of precedent and judges who hear only business disputes. It offers a flexible, frequently updated statute. And it offers predictability: lawyers, banks and counterparties already understand a Delaware entity, so deals close faster. None of this is unique to giants — it is exactly why a solo founder choosing where to form a single company so often lands on the same state. Our Delaware LLC formation guide walks through how that filing works at the small end of the scale.

The structural lesson is that the Delaware entity is a building block, not a status symbol. BlackRock stacks hundreds of them; you might need exactly one. The block is the same shape either way, and the statute that governs your single-member LLC is the same Delaware Limited Liability Company Act that governs the holding entities sitting above a multibillion-dollar acquisition.

Which brands are often confused as owned by BlackRock but are NOT?

This is the section most ownership articles skip, and it is the one that matters most for accuracy. The single biggest confusion is Blackstone. BlackRock and Blackstone are separate companies with separate owners, separate management and separate businesses. They shared roots and split in 1994 — Larry Fink built BlackRock as an asset manager, Stephen Schwarzman kept Blackstone as a private-equity and real-estate firm. Neither owns the other. Their similar names cause endless mix-ups, but their subsidiaries do not overlap.

The second great confusion is the long list of famous companies — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and many more — that BlackRock is said to “own.” BlackRock holds shares in thousands of public companies, but those shares sit inside index funds and ETFs and belong, economically, to the millions of clients invested in those funds. BlackRock votes those shares as a fiduciary; it does not own those companies as subsidiaries. Treating an index holding as corporate ownership is the single error this page exists to correct.

A third, subtler confusion is the idea that any company sitting inside a GIP infrastructure fund or an HPS credit fund is “owned by BlackRock.” BlackRock owns the manager— GIP, HPS — not necessarily each portfolio asset those managers hold for their own fund investors. The acquired manager is the BlackRock-owned business; the underlying fund holdings remain investments made on behalf of those funds’ clients, which is a different relationship entirely.

A useful test: a company is owned by BlackRock when BlackRock controls it as a parent entity and consolidates it — iShares, Aladdin, eFront, GIP, Preqin, HPS. A company is notowned by BlackRock when BlackRock merely holds its stock for fund investors, however large that stake looks in a headline. This distinction is not pedantic; it changes what the ownership actually means. When BlackRock votes the shares it holds in a public company, it does so as a steward of other people’s money, subject to the mandate of the funds and increasingly to client-directed voting choices. It cannot treat those companies as subsidiaries, move their cash, or fold them into its own operations. By contrast, when BlackRock owns iShares or Aladdin or HPS, it can and does run them as parts of itself.

How does BlackRock’s use of Delaware compare to a founder’s?

The contrast between BlackRock and a one-person company is instructive precisely because the underlying tool is identical. BlackRock uses Delaware entities to wrap acquisitions worth billions; a founder uses a single Delaware LLC to wrap a freelance practice, a software product, or an e-commerce store. The statute, the court system and the legal recognition do not change with the size of the business. What changes is the number of entities and the complexity of the structure on top.

For a small founder, the practical advantages are the ones that actually move the needle day to day: a recognized US legal identity that banks and payment processors understand, a clean separation between business and personal assets, and a formation process that takes about 48 hours. You will not need a registered agent servicing hundreds of subsidiaries — you need one, and it is included in year one of our service. The point is that the same Delaware vehicle scales all the way down.

There is a second, quieter advantage that founders often overlook. Because so many serious businesses — BlackRock among them — already sit in Delaware, everyone in the ecosystem knows how to deal with a Delaware entity. A US bank reviewing your application has processed countless Delaware LLCs before yours. A payment processor’s onboarding flow expects one. An investor reviewing a future round will not blink at it. That familiarity is not glamorous, but it removes friction at exactly the moments where a new company can stall: opening an account, getting approved for payments, or signing a contract with a larger counterparty who wants to know what they are dealing with. You are not paying for prestige; you are paying for the absence of friction, and that is much the same thing the giants buy when they default to Delaware.

What does it cost a founder to form the same kind of Delaware entity?

BlackRock spends heavily on legal teams to structure its subsidiaries, but forming the single Delaware entity at the base of all of it is inexpensive. Our service is a flat $397, and the Delaware state filing fee is already included — there is no separate state charge to add on at checkout. That covers the Certificate of Formation, the EIN application, a registered agent for year one, your operating agreement, US bank and Stripe application support, and compliance tracking.

From year two, the ongoing state obligation for a Delaware LLC is a flat $300franchise tax due June 1, plus roughly $99 to renew your registered agent. It is worth being precise here, because franchise tax is the single most misunderstood Delaware cost: the “authorized shares” and “assumed par value capital” methods that produce large, variable bills apply only to Delaware corporations, never to LLCs. An LLC simply pays the flat $300, with no share-based math and no annual report to file. The detail is on our Delaware franchise tax page.

Miss the June 1 deadline and Delaware adds a $200 penalty plus 1.5% interest per month, and the LLC loses good standing — which is exactly why we track the date for you. For the full picture, including how the LLC flat fee differs from the corporate methods, see our Delaware LLC cost breakdown. If you ever decided you needed a corporation instead — for example, to raise venture capital — the heavier corporate compliance is covered on our Delaware C-Corp page.

How does a non-resident founder form the Delaware entity?

BlackRock’s subsidiaries are formed by lawyers, but a small founder forms a Delaware LLC remotely, and crucially, you do not need to be in the United States. You do not need a US Social Security Number, an ITIN, a visa, or a US address to form the LLC or to obtain its EIN. Delaware does not require members to be US citizens or residents, which is why founders from many countries use it as their US home. Our Delaware LLC for non-residents guide lays out the whole path.

That accessibility is the part that surprises people most. The instinct is that a structure used by the largest asset manager on the planet must be out of reach for an individual, when in fact the formation itself is one of the most democratized legal products in the United States. The state does not ask whether you are a person or a multinational; it processes the Certificate of Formation the same way for both. The difference between BlackRock and you is everything built on top of the entity — the financing, the people, the further subsidiaries — not the entity itself. The base layer is identical, and it is available to anyone willing to file correctly and keep up with a short list of annual obligations.

The sequence is predictable. The Certificate of Formation is filed and the LLC exists in about 48 hours. The EIN is then obtained with Form SS-4, which the IRS processes by fax or mail for non-resident applicants — the reason it takes 2 to 4 weeks rather than minutes. Once the EIN is issued, you can apply for US banking and payments. Our how it works page shows the step order from name check to a funded account.

How do banking and payments work for a Delaware LLC?

A multinational like BlackRock banks with the largest institutions in the world; a solo founder uses US fintech banks that open business accounts online. Once your EIN is issued, banks such as Mercury, Relay and Wise open accounts for non-residents without a US visit, with approval typically landing within 1 to 5 business days after the EIN is in hand. Approval is always the bank’s decision — it is never guaranteed — so a specialist helps you apply to more than one until you are live. Our Delaware LLC banking guide compares the common choices.

For card payments, many founders add Stripealongside their bank account. Stripe approval is likewise the provider’s decision, and we help you present a clean application. One practical note on US tax forms: the 1099-K reporting threshold that applies to payment processors is now more than $20,000 and more than 200 transactions in a year — the old, lower $600 figure was repealed — so do not budget around outdated numbers.

The mental model that helps here is sequencing. None of the banking or payment steps can begin until the EIN exists, and the EIN cannot begin until the LLC is formed. Founders who try to short-circuit the order — applying to a bank before the IRS number is issued, for example — are the ones who hit early declines. Keeping the details identical across every document also matters: the LLC name, your personal name and the business address should read the same on the formation certificate, the EIN confirmation, and every account application. A giant like BlackRock has whole teams enforcing that consistency across hundreds of entities; a solo founder only has to enforce it across one, which is entirely manageable when you know it is the thing that quietly determines whether applications sail through or stall.

What ongoing US filings does a founder’s Delaware LLC face?

BlackRock has an army of accountants; a founder has a short, knowable list. The state side is simple: the flat $300 franchise tax due June 1 from year two, and no annual report for an LLC. The federal side depends on ownership. If you are a non-US person owning 25% or more of a single-member Delaware LLC treated as a disregarded entity, the IRS requires Form 5472 each year, attached to a pro forma Form 1120, reporting transactions between you and your LLC.

Form 5472 is the filing most non-resident owners must not miss, because the penalty for failing to file is $25,000 under IRC 6038A. It is due April 15 and can be extended with Form 7004. We track this deadline and explain it in full on our Form 5472 for Delaware LLCs page. Broader US tax treatment — whether income is effectively connected to a US trade or business — is fact-specific and turns on the nature of the business and any applicable treaty, so confirm your own position with a qualified CPA; our Delaware LLC taxes overview gives the general shape.

Beneficial-ownership reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act is the one remaining federal item to watch, and it applies to small LLCs far more than to a public giant like BlackRock. The rules have changed significantly and remain in flux. In March 2025, FinCEN issued an interim final rule that removed the beneficial-ownership reporting obligation for US-formed domestic reporting companies; under that rule, only certain foreign reporting companies registered to do business in the US remain in scope, and US persons are generally exempt from providing their information. Because this area is evolving and may shift again, do not treat any summary — including this one — as final; confirm the current FinCEN requirements at the source or with a professional before relying on your filing status. The contrast with the franchise tax is the takeaway: the $300 Delaware obligation is fixed and predictable, while the federal reporting picture is the part that genuinely moves, so it is the one worth re-checking each year rather than assuming last year’s answer still holds.

Should you choose a Delaware LLC or a different structure?

BlackRock holds both corporations and LLCs depending on the role each entity plays, and a founder faces a smaller version of the same choice. For most solo and small-team founders, a Delaware LLC is the clean default: flexible, inexpensive to maintain, and a pass-through for US tax so profit flows to the owner rather than being taxed at the company level. The comparison below is a quick orientation, not legal advice — confirm the right structure with an advisor before deciding.

Notice that the holding-company row is the BlackRock pattern in miniature: it makes sense precisely when you have many separate businesses to keep apart, each with its own liabilities, contracts, and possible buyers. That is the situation a giant lives in every day, and it is why Delaware subsidiaries stacked under a parent are worth the overhead for them. For a founder with one business, that same machinery is pure unnecessary cost — more filings, more annual franchise taxes, more bookkeeping, and no added protection you would actually use. The lesson to draw from studying what BlackRock owns is not to imitate its complexity but to recognize that the building block underneath all of it is a single Delaware entity, and that one building block is all most founders need.

So start with one Delaware LLC. It gives you the recognized US identity, the liability separation, and the clean banking base that the giants get from their Delaware subsidiaries, without the apparatus they carry to manage hundreds of them. If your plans later call for outside investment, our Delaware C-Corp guide explains when the corporate route earns its extra weight. Either way, you can begin the whole process remotely, today, from anywhere in the world — the same Delaware framework BlackRock relies on, available to you for a flat $397 with the state filing fee included.

Many of these companies chose Delaware for the same reasons founders do today — the Court of Chancery, flexible LLC statutes, and strong privacy protections. Form your Delaware LLC for $397, all-inclusive, in 48 hours. Form your Delaware LLC → | Read the complete Delaware LLC guide →