Expanding Investments via Private Market Strategies
In a recent interview on the Goldman Sachs Exchanges: Great Investors podcast, Raffaele Savi, the global head of BlackRock Systematic, discussed the future potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in private market investments.
Savi, who oversees BlackRock's quantitative teams across fixed income, equity, and factor investing, sees AI as a transformative force in scaling investment strategies and enhancing their universality. He believes that AI, through interactive generative AI and large language models, can be prompted in natural language, making it more accessible and broadly applicable.
Currently, BlackRock Systematic manages over $317 billion in assets, and AI is viewed as a key driver to extend systematic investing into private markets. Savi acknowledges some skepticism from traditional investment practitioners toward AI hype but maintains that the core interesting concepts around AI are scale, universality, and interactivity, especially with generative AI’s ability to "speak our language" and broaden its use cases and appeal.
The future potential of AI in private markets lies in its ability to systematically process and analyze complex data at scale, making private market investments more data-driven, efficient, and accessible through AI-driven models and tools. This represents a strategic evolution in quantitative investing beyond liquid public markets.
Savi's team has developed products with BlackRock's private equity team for a traditional fundamental investment approach to private equities. He expects to see more partnerships and collaborations in the market for private equities in the next ten years.
In the past year, BlackRock has made several acquisitions to expand in private markets, including the purchase of Preqin and Global Infrastructure Partners. The HPS deal, one of these acquisitions, closed on 1 July 2025, with BlackRock investing $12 billion in global credit investment manager HPS Investment Partners.
As more investors have private assets in their portfolios, Savi finds it interesting and rewarding to build an optimal public/private portfolio. He believes that AI will open the door for a systematic approach in investing in longer time horizons and less liquid asset classes, such as private markets.
Looking ahead, Savi predicts that state-of-the-art models will use different data sources such as product reviews, search trends, Instagram posts, interviews, and various forms of human capital networks in 15 years.
Savi joined Barclay's Global Investors in 2006 before the asset manager was acquired by BlackRock in 2009. He now sits on the firm's global executive committee. Savi believes that AI will help build safer portfolios, similar to how safety engineering has improved cars and aircraft over the years.
In summary, Raffaele Savi believes that systemic investing in private markets will become "the big market" over the next ten years, with AI playing a crucial role in making private market investments more data-driven, efficient, and accessible.
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