Larry Fink’s 2026 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors
At a glance
01.
Markets are driving more of economic growth
In a period of significant uncertainty, a growing share of economic value is being created in the capital markets. That creates a powerful opportunity—but only for those investing for the long term.
02.
Growth is reaching too few people
Countries are investing more at home, wealth has flowed mainly to asset owners, and AI could accelerate that trend—creating more value, but concentrating it among those already invested.
03.
The opportunity is to broaden ownership
Expanding long-term investing—through retirement systems, earlier access, and modernized markets—can help more people share in economic growth and build long-term financial security.
Growing with your country: Thoughts from a long-term optimist
Every year, I write this letter as a distillation of a year’s worth of conversations with clients and employees, world leaders, CEOs—and people investing for their retirement. Lately, no matter who is speaking, they’re saying the same thing: We’re not sure how to navigate this moment.
It’s understandable. We are living through a period where things that would've defined a decade have become routine: wars with global repercussions, trillion-dollar companies, a fundamental reordering of international trade, and the advent of the most significant technology since, at least, the computer.
Too often, this gets filtered through a short-term lens. Daily market moves are treated as signals of lasting change, and complex economic or technological transitions are compressed into headlines. We live in a world where information moves instantly, and reactions follow just as fast. At times, it can feel dopamine-driven—where constant input rewards short-term impulses. But speed can distort perspective, crowding out long-term thinking.
To be fair, in financial markets all this short-term activity serves a purpose. It’s how new information is absorbed, risks are priced, and capital is allocated.
But over time, staying invested has mattered far more than getting the timing right. Over the past two decades, every dollar invested in the S&P 500 grew more than eightfold. Miss just the ten best days, and you would have earned less than half.1 And some of the market’s strongest days came amid the most unsettling headlines.
The danger is that we focus so much on the noise that we forget what actually matters. The forces behind today’s headlines have been building for a long time. The old model of global capitalism is fracturing. Countries are spending enormous sums to become self-reliant—in energy, in defense, in technology.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of wealth has flowed to people who owned assets, not to people who earned most of their money by working. Since 1989, a dollar in the U.S. stock market has grown more than 15 times the value of a dollar tied to median wages.2 Now AI threatens to repeat that pattern at an even larger scale—concentrating wealth among the companies and investors positioned to capture it.
This is where much of today’s economic anxiety comes from: a deeper feeling that capitalism is working—just not for enough people. And a focus on short-term investing is not a fix for that. Rather, it is long-term investing that allows countries to build domestic industries, that lets people build enduring wealth and shows how their country’s growth can benefit them too.
At its best, long-term investing performs a kind of civic miracle. When people invest their savings—over decades, not days—the capital markets put that money to work, financing companies, infrastructure, and jobs. And when that cycle happens in your own country, your future and your nation’s future become linked. You help finance its growth. It helps finance yours.
My belief in this civic miracle is obviously shaped by my job. But I’m not speaking only as the CEO of BlackRock—that belief reflects decades of experience seeing how investing can help more people share in economic growth.
It is also grounded in something more personal. My father was born in 1925. My mother in 1930. They didn’t come from a lot of money. My dad owned a shoe store. My mom taught English. But they saved what they could and invested it.
This was the 1950s and ‘60s, right when the Interstate Highway System was being built, the mid-century industrial boom was taking off, and the auto sector was reshaping American life. And in their own small way, they helped finance all of that. They were part of the capital that built modern America. And over time, the gains flowed back to them. By the time they retired, they had enough savings to live comfortably well past 100. Because their wealth compounded alongside the American economy.
And that dynamic extends far beyond the United States. Across countries and generations, the pattern has been remarkably similar. Families who invested broadly and consistently—through depression and war, through inflation, financial crises, and even a global pandemic—had the opportunity for their wealth to grow alongside their economies. That history is why I remain a long-term optimist. Not because the path is smooth, but because markets have tended to reward those who stay invested through uncertainty.
That is what this moment is about. Expanding that opportunity. Ensuring more people can own a stake in their country’s growth. Because today, too many are left out.
Many people don’t have the money to invest in the first place—households living paycheck-to-paycheck. You can’t invest if you’re not sure you can afford next month’s rent, next week’s groceries, or an unexpected bill. So the starting point has to be helping people build basic financial security.
And that’s starting to happen. Emergency savings accounts where employers can match contributions and workers can withdraw penalty-free are gaining traction. And a growing number of countries are experimenting with investment accounts seeded at birth, giving kids a stake in their country’s growth from the time they leave the hospital.
Even where savings exist, participation remains limited. The U.S. likely has the highest rate of market participation in the world. Still, roughly 40% of the population has no exposure to the capital markets.3 Around the world, participation is far lower.4 Billions watch their economies grow from the outside, as renters rather than owners—putting their savings in bank accounts that earn little, rather than investing to share in the growth around them.
Markets work when investors trust they can buy and sell at a fair price. That trust helps businesses raise the capital they need to grow, and it allows families to spread their investments across many assets at low cost instead of relying on just one. Expanding access to that system—through better technology and financial education—could help more people share in economic growth. Over time, the same technological advances could also help bring greater transparency and potentially broader access to parts of the private markets—areas like infrastructure and private credit that have traditionally been out of reach for most individual investors.
Half the world’s population carries a digital wallet on their phone.5 Imagine if that same digital wallet could also let you invest in a broad mix of companies for the long term—as easily as sending a payment. Tokenization could help accelerate that future by updating the plumbing of the financial system—making investments easier to issue, easier to trade, and easier to access.
I start this letter with the forces that make this conversation particularly urgent right now: the reshuffling of global trade, the inequality that’s risen over the past generation, and how AI threatens to widen the gap without broader market participation.
Then I’ll offer four examples—among many—of how countries are already expanding market participation and helping more people grow with their economies.
The final section turns to BlackRock’s work with clients, which advances many of these same goals.
One last thing: Writing this letter is part of my duty to our shareholders and clients. But it is also a letter. And letters are meant to begin conversations. I hope this one does. I’ll be seeking out a range of perspectives, and I intend to spotlight some that meaningfully advance the discussion.
The world is reorganizing around self-reliance—and that’s expensive. The massive wealth created over the past several generations flowed mostly to people who already owned financial assets. And now AI threatens to repeat that pattern at an even larger scale. Each of these forces, on its own, would be a reason to rethink how we invest. Together, they make the case: If we want more people to share in future growth, we have to make long-term investing easier, broader, and more accessible.
First, the world is reorganizing around self-reliance. And that requires more long-term investment.
Everywhere I travel, I hear some version of the same thing. Europe is building up its own defense industry. Emerging markets are developing domestic energy. The United States is trying to rebuild its manufacturing sector. The details differ, but the trend is obvious: Countries are investing to become less dependent on one another.
They’re doing it for a reason. For many governments, accepting higher costs in pursuit of self-reliance is seen as an investment in resilience and long-term competitiveness—strengthening domestic industrial capacity, anchoring jobs and investment at home, and securing greater control over critical sectors.
But that transition is expensive. Sourcing critical minerals like rare earths outside China and building chip fabs outside Taiwan cost significantly more. Every step toward self-reliance means, at least temporarily, giving up the global economies of scale that kept costs down for decades. Put simply: In the short run, self-reliance is costly.
So where does the money come from? Historically, most of the financing for big economic shifts came from banks, corporations, and governments—not the capital markets. And that makes sense. That’s where people put their money. They parked savings in bank accounts, drove corporate growth by buying goods and services, and paid taxes that funded public investment.
But those channels aren’t enough anymore. Banks alone can’t finance what a growing economy needs. Governments are carrying record debt. Even the wealthiest economies in the Gulf—sitting on enormous sovereign wealth—aren’t funding their ambitions with public money alone. And when the Magnificent 7 companies build out data centers or power infrastructure, even they turn to the capital markets.6
More and more, the money for self-reliance is coming from the markets. And there’s a natural logic to making sure more of it comes from domestic investors.
For decades, capital chased returns around the world—often without enough benefit to the people back home. Money should still move freely toward opportunity. That’s what makes markets work. But it doesn’t mean countries can’t also do more to help channel capital into their own growth.
Second, broader participation in investing can help address the wealth inequality the last era of global capitalism left behind.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, more wealth has been created than in all prior human history.11 In the developing world, more than a billion people escaped extreme poverty and entered the middle class.12 Companies in the developed world gained access to vast new markets. Consumers got cheaper goods. But in rich countries, the benefits accrued to too few people.
There’s a vast body of economic literature on how we got here. But the simplest, and maybe least discussed, explanation is that most of the wealth flowed to the capital markets—and too few people were invested in them.
For many families, wealth-building instead centered on a single asset. Homeownership was the primary way middle-class families built wealth. For many, it still is.
But housing is not a guaranteed high-return investment. Once you account for property taxes, insurance, maintenance, and transaction costs—all of which have risen meaningfully in many places—long-term returns can be more modest and more uneven than headline price increases suggest.
This isn’t uniquely American—across many advanced economies, rising housing costs and tighter lending conditions have made homeownership harder to access, especially for younger people.
A home provides stability, community, and a means of forced savings—benefits that go well beyond financial return. But if we want broader participation in economic growth, we cannot rely on a single asset, purchased later and later in life, to carry that burden alone.13
It’s hard not to empathize with people dealing with this. If you no longer believe your job is a path to success, believe that you can’t afford a home, or believe that even if you can, it won’t build a lot of wealth, then the economy doesn’t feel like it’s working for you. No country can prosper if that’s how its citizens feel.
Plenty of ideas have been put forward to address this. But if prosperity is increasingly being created in the capital markets, part of the answer is to make sure more people are invested in them.
That doesn’t diminish the real challenges around housing affordability or the fact that earnings for many households have not kept pace with asset values. It simply means a critical part of the solution is bringing more people into the capital markets—so they can share in the growth already taking place, not just watch it from the sidelines.
Third, there’s a real risk artificial intelligence could widen wealth inequality if ownership does not broaden alongside it.
When we talk about the economic disruption of AI, most of the conversation is about jobs. That’s an enormously important question, and one that goes beyond economics. Work provides income, purpose, and dignity.
But history suggests that transformative technologies create enormous value—and much of that value accrues to the companies that build and deploy them, and to the investors who own them.
The economy is rewarding scale like never before. In industry after industry, we’re seeing more divergent, “K-shaped” outcomes, where leading firms pull further ahead while others struggle to keep pace. The contrast can be striking: Walmart reached its highest-ever valuation, two weeks after Saks went bankrupt.14
AI may accelerate this trend further. The companies with the data, infrastructure, and capital to deploy AI at scale are positioned to benefit disproportionately. That is not unusual, and none of this is inherently problematic. Market leadership has always shifted with technological change. The broader question is who participates in the gains. When market capitalization rises but ownership remains narrow, prosperity can feel increasingly distant to those on the outside.
AI is here to stay. It is central to strategic competition between the United States and China. The U.S. clearly sees that AI leadership is not optional, and that it will require sustained investment—in research, infrastructure, talent, and the capital markets capable of financing innovation at scale.
AI is also reshaping investing itself. Long before generative AI captured the public imagination, advances in data science and computing were transforming how investors analyze markets, manage risk, and allocate capital. One result has been the growth of systematic investing—an approach that uses large datasets, research-driven models, and disciplined processes to evaluate thousands of securities consistently and at scale, rather than relying solely on individual judgment.
BlackRock has spent four decades building these capabilities: expanding our data, refining our models, and applying technology to identify patterns and manage risk to help clients achieve better outcomes over time. As these tools become more powerful, we believe the combination of systematic insight and human oversight will help define the next era of investing.
One thing is clear: AI will create significant economic value. Ensuring that participation in that growth expands alongside it is both the challenge and the opportunity.
Thank you
Finally, I want to say a profound “thank you” to everybody at BlackRock. When we founded this company 38 years ago, we hoped that someday we might be able to recruit the best minds in the financial sector to join us. We did. And after nearly four decades at BlackRock, the people are the reason I still love coming to work. So, to all my BlackRock colleagues, I’m so grateful for you.
And to BlackRock’s clients: Thank you for your trust. We know choosing someone to manage your money is a sacred thing, and we don’t take it for granted. Serving you is a real privilege.
Sincerely,
Laurence Fink Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
If prosperity is increasingly being created in the capital markets, part of the answer is to make sure more people are invested in them.
Social Security is a core promise, and people rightly believe it should be honored. But under the current system, doing nothing could very well break that promise.
This is not just a story about a country catching up to the existing financial system. It’s a story about building modern financial infrastructure from the ground up.
Pension reform—particularly in large economies such as Germany—can meaningfully expand Europe’s long-term capital base and channel Europe’s substantial savings into the growth and innovation that will define its next chapter.
BlackRock’s platform is anchored by scale engines tied to the long-term expansion of the global capital markets and fast-growing client and product channels.
Looking ahead to 2030, we aspire to deliver more than $35 billion in revenue, with 30% or more coming from private markets and technology.
AI can be a powerful business accelerator for Aladdin, amplifying the strengths of its scale, deep resources, proprietary data, and extensive embedded network across the global investment ecosystem.
Sidebar: Energy abundance and affordability
For several years, I’ve argued for energy pragmatism. Meeting rising demand will require expanding supply across oil and gas, renewables, storage, nuclear, and grids. No single source can do it alone.
But in the United States, one point is becoming hard to ignore: If energy is to remain affordable for families, more power needs to come online—and quickly.
Electricity demand is rising again after years of relative stability.7 Homes are more electrified. Industry is expanding. Data centers require large amounts of reliable power. At the same time, adding new generation and transmission capacity takes years. When supply grows slowly and demand rises faster, prices move up.
Natural gas remains essential for reliability, and the U.S. has abundant supply.8 But gas alone is unlikely to meet projected growth in electricity demand in every region. A broader expansion of capacity will be necessary. Nuclear power will also be critical over the longer term—but new capacity takes time to develop, reinforcing the need to scale additional sources now.
Solar is likely to play a significant role in that expansion. It is one of the fastest sources of new power to deploy, and over the past decade its costs have declined substantially.9 Solar does not replace other sources—it complements them. Paired with battery storage and upgraded grids, it can help increase total supply and ease price pressure over time.
Supply chains matter. Today, much of the world’s solar and battery manufacturing capacity is concentrated in China.10 For reasons of resilience and security, the United States and its partners are investing in diversifying production and expanding domestic manufacturing. Scaling solar in America should go hand in hand with building a stronger and more diversified supply base. That includes battery manufacturing and the critical minerals and components that underpin it, which are increasingly central to energy security and industrial competitiveness.
The principle is simple. Affordable energy depends on abundant energy. When power is scarce, households feel it first—in monthly utility bills and in the broader cost of living. When supply expands reliably, economies grow and families benefit.
The goal is not to favor one technology over another. It is to ensure that the United States can generate enough dependable, cost-effective electricity to support both household budgets and long-term competitiveness. That will require speed, scale, and sustained investment across multiple energy sources—including a meaningful expansion of solar.
Sidebar: One quick thought on AI and the labor force
Historically, automation has increased productivity and, over time, expanded the range of available work—even as it displaced specific roles. AI may do the same. But new roles take time to emerge, and workers don’t always move seamlessly from old ones to new ones.
There is no consensus on what AI will mean for the labor market—particularly for entry-level white-collar roles. The truth is, no one knows with certainty.
In the near term, there are roles we know are in clear demand, and pay well: skilled trades, especially the ones building the physical infrastructure of AI, like data centers, power systems, and electrical grids. In the U.S., employment for electricians is growing 3x faster than the national average.15
Many of these jobs pay well over the median wage, in many cases six figures. And that’s true across many Western economies.16
As NVIDIA President and CEO Jensen Huang told me: “Everybody should be able to make a great living. You don’t need a PhD in computer science to do so.”
The question is how to get more people into these jobs. The skills gap is real and requires sustained investment in training and apprenticeships. That’s why The BlackRock Foundation launched Future Builders, a $100 million philanthropic initiative to expand economic opportunity and power the next generation of America’s skilled trades workers, reaching 50,000 workers over the next five years.
But the issue runs deeper than training. For decades, many societies have equated success with a university degree and a white-collar path. As technology reshapes parts of that landscape, we need a broader conversation about opportunity, dignity, and the value of different kinds of work. What are we going to do about that?
It’s a conversation worth having.
At 5%, U.S. employment in skilled trades is projected to grow faster than the 3% national average (Projected job growth 2024-2034)
Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook; BlackRock, 2026. Data last modified by the BLS as of August 2025. The national average includes all wage and salary workers, self-employed workers, and workers in agriculture and private households. Military occupations are excluded.