Stephen Schwarzman

Stephen Schwarzman is chairman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone, one of the world’s largest alternative investment firms, with $1.2 trillion in assets under management as of Sept. 30, 2025. Schwarzman has been involved in all phases of Blackstone’s development since its founding in 1985. The firm has established leading investing businesses across asset classes, including private equity, where it is a global leader in traditional buyout, growth equity, special situations and secondary investing; real estate, where it is the largest owner of commercial property in the world; multi-asset investing, where it is the world’s largest discretionary allocator to hedge funds; and credit, where it is a global leader and major provider of financing for companies of all sizes. Blackstone also maintains major businesses dedicated to infrastructure and life sciences investing, as well as delivering the firm’s investment management expertise and products to insurance companies.

Schwarzman is an active philanthropist with a long history of supporting education, culture and the arts. In 2020, he signed The Giving Pledge, committing to give the majority of his wealth to philanthropic causes. His philanthropy focuses on large-scale, transformative initiatives. In June 2019, he donated £150 million to the University of Oxford to redefine the study of the humanities for the 21st century. The gift — the largest single donation to Oxford since the Renaissance — will support a new Centre for the Humanities, uniting all humanities faculties under one roof for the first time in the university’s history and creating new performing arts and exhibition spaces, as well as an Institute for Ethics in AI.

In October 2018, he announced a $350 million gift to establish the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, an interdisciplinary hub designed to position MIT to address the opportunities and challenges presented by artificial intelligence, including ethical and policy considerations. In 2015, he donated $150 million to Yale University to establish the Schwarzman Center, a first-of-its-kind campus center in the historic Commons building. He also provided a $40 million founding gift to the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, which supports tuition assistance for underprivileged children in Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New York. In 2013, Schwarzman founded the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University in Beijing to educate future global leaders about China. The program, valued at more than $575 million and modeled on the Rhodes Scholarship, is the largest philanthropic effort in China’s history funded largely by international donors. Schwarzman is co-chair of the board of trustees of Schwarzman Scholars. In 2007, he donated $100 million to the New York Public Library, where he serves on the board.

In 2019, Schwarzman published, "What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence," a New York Times bestseller with more than 1 million copies sold worldwide, reflecting on his experiences in business, philanthropy and public service.

Schwarzman was elected a Wykeham Fellow at New College, Oxford, in 2021 and a Waynflete Fellow at Magdalen College in 2023. In 2024, he was appointed an honorary Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) for his services to philanthropy. He is also a recipient of the Arthur Ross Award for Patronage from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.