final chat. Delighted to have with us, from Blackstone, Michael Chae, CFO. Mike, thanks so much. Ben, nice to be here. Thanks. Nice to see everyone. Maybe just to kick it off, you know, can you talk about your current view of the world? You know, what are you seeing from a macro perspective? How do you see the environment shaking out over the next 6- 12 months? Sure. Well, as we often sort of talk about, we first like to look within in assessing what we think is going on, and so we focus on the pretty unique and rich data and insights we have from our portfolio. You know, we have 250 or so companies in which we've of large equity stakes. We've got, you know, 13,000 plus individual real estate assets around the world. We have a very big borrower portfolio, you know, several thousand sort of credits in the credit portfolio. So, you know, what we've been seeing, and we've talked about this, is both inflation and the economy cooling. You know, we've been sort of seeing it, and I guess calling it out for well over a year. I guess well ahead of what recently has become more consensus and maybe even sort of rather obvious now. I'd start with on the inflation side. You know, if you just take what was put out this morning in terms of the CPI print, we sort of take the data and then look at it a bit of our own way. I think what was put out was 2% and 2.5%. That obviously has a pretty significant shelter component, which we believe lags and is pretty noisy. So we take that, like we did this morning, look at it ex shelter. Excluding shelter is 1.1%, and then we actually overlay more of a real-time, non-lagging, market rent-driven, you know, metric on that. And when you put that in there, it's about 1.7% versus the 2.5%. So, and that shelter component lagged on the way up, which caused us to maybe see inflation more decisively earlier than some, and it's lagged on the way down. So, that's so we look at that and we say we're basically at target. I think the Fed increasingly also looks through the shelter component of that. You know, we also see from our own inputs, you know, labor markets have been softening. We do a survey of our portfolio company CEOs every quarter. And back in June, that survey basically said they saw wage inflation going from sort of 4% levels to around 3% in the subsequent twelve months. So that was pretty meaningful. And more importantly, like, when you survey them, they saw and are seeing, you know, in terms of hiring, the easiest hiring conditions, you know, in three years. And again, that's consistent with what you saw later in the summer around the jobs numbers. And, on in terms of the overall economy, you know, in parallel, a cooling, but still resilience. And so in our portfolio, you know, globally, we saw resilient but decelerating revenue growth in sort of the mid-single digits, but with quite resilient margins. I think that's been striking in this cycle. Very resilient margins and productivity gains, near zero input cost inflation and so forth, and then pockets of weakness in terms of the lower-end consumer discretionary enterprise spending, including in software bookings and so forth, so that's sort of the picture we've been seeing. We don't have a crystal ball about where this goes, but we are cautiously optimistic about a soft landing. Obviously, labor is the key, and also our own inputs are... Our CEOs in June, basically only about 14% of them, when surveyed, saw a recession in the next 12 months. On the labor market side, you know, right now you're basically seeing flat private sector job growth, both in the economy overall, and that's in our portfolio, it's consistent. And we're getting there with sort of neither a lot of hiring nor a lot of layoffs. And that's what a soft landing looks like, but time will tell. So soft landings are hard to land. They're pretty rare in history, but where we sit today looks pretty encouraging. That obviously then leads to the rate question, where, you know, markets, like, second by second, are discounting whether it's 25 or 50 and what the pace is from there. We'll see. For us, you know, in some ways, where the fair value of the 10-year settles over time is even more important to us as investors. And at the current kind of mid-threes level, mid to high threes area, you know, that's a pretty constructive context for the capital markets and for our business. Got it. Well, that's a good segue into, you know, Blackstone's business. So, you know, with that view in mind, what does this all mean for the transaction environment, you know, both in terms of your ability to invest and to, you know, realize and monetize investments that have been made? Yeah, I think in short, it should mean good things over time. I would say in general, we're seeing signs of the return of animal spirits in the transaction market, and that if these trends hold, I think that could in particular lead to a pretty robust 2025 in terms of activity levels. Every cycle is different, we, you know, but we've sort of seen the general movie before. You know, we're coming out of a cost of capital shock, a historic one, and now, that cost of capital is dropping. You know, base rates falling, tighter spreads, the bid-ask between sellers and buyers is narrowing, and capital availability, including credit, is expanding dramatically. So that leads to the sort of virtuous circle and flywheel in our business, you know, restarting. It starts with deployment, which in turn, over time, leads to an acceleration in realizations and capital return to our LPs, and that fuels fundraising over time. So that's a good thing to get going. And you know, we see very significant pent-up demand and activity levels that are basically, whether it's the IPO market or the M&A market at large, that have basically been suppressed for a historically long time, you know, two, two and a half years. We're now, you know, we're heading towards three years of a quite suppressed IPO market, which is pretty ahistorical. So, you know, while in the moment, and maybe you heard this from some of the investment banks, participants in the last day or two, while in the moment it feels like we're in a bit of a holding pattern, that's persisting, whether it's because of, you know, temporal, electoral, election uncertainty, or just waiting for the Fed to follow through on rates. Again, I think assuming a soft landing scenario, that I talked about, if that hangs in there, I think, you know, we could definitely see the logjam truly breaking in 2025, and that being a very big year. On the deployment side, in the meantime, you know, we've been very active. We invested, deployed or committed $50 billion... Over $50 billion in the second quarter, $90 billion over the sort of three-quarter period. Very similar, you know, are seeing kind of high conviction themes across the firm. And you know, you saw last week, we announced a $16 billion deal around AirTrunk, the largest data center player in Asia. I'll maybe talk more about that in a second. So look, we've got $181 billion in dry powder. We see things, the flywheel starting and so that bodes well for us at this point in the cycle. On the realization side, that should benefit, you know, over time from this improving transaction environment. I think we're definitely like a coiled spring in this area. However, as we said in last earnings call, the backdrop, you know, is not yet robust as it relates to scale dispositions. As again, as we said in July, we expect a near-term lag between markets improving and pickup in realizations. That's typical at this point in the cycle. Pretty calm about that. This remains our expectation for the third quarter. At the same time, we see 2025 as potentially much more robust. Separately on this topic, you know, we recognize that revenue from realizations is sort of inherently tricky to forecast on a short-term basis. I did want to share that, and it's sort of another step for us to make our financials even easier to follow. We do plan to introduce, this quarter, a regular interquarter update on realizations, realization activity. We'll post that, the first one later this month with respect to Q3, and then going forward on a regular basis late in the quarter. You know, we've been hearing and listening to investors and research analysts that this would be helpful and welcome, and so we want to be responsive to that. Being the lazy analyst that I am, I'm very much appreciative, so that it'll make our jobs a little easier. We aim to please. So maybe a kind of high-level question about Blackstone. So you're the largest alternative asset manager in the world. So at $1 trillion of AUM, how do you think about growth at scale? And how are your traditional institutional LPs, you know, thinking about their private markets allocations? There's long been this question about whether scale is, you know, the enemy or the friend of growth and performance. We would say with conviction, real conviction, that scale is decidedly our friend, and we think that's being demonstrated more and more. That it creates really huge advantages for us that benefit performance and ultimately growth. You know, I think a really ongoing but recent powerful illustration of that is what we're doing today in digital and in AI infrastructure. We believe we're the largest financial investor in AI infrastructure globally. And it really reflects. We'll talk more about, but I would say the new world we're in as a capital provider, a capital solutions provider, in transformational areas, you know, on a really massive global scale. So last week, as I mentioned, we announced this $16 billion acquisition of AirTrunk. It's the largest data center operator in Asia Pacific. It's the largest investment the firm's ever made in the region or committed to in the region. And now we have the largest and fastest growing data center platforms in the U.S. with QTS, in Asia with AirTrunk, and a very large business in Europe. And I'd say the advantages of our scale, really, and our brand really manifest in a few ways. You know, first, just having a pool of capital across the firm of the scale needed to move with speed and certainty, to execute an opportunity like this, really sort of the best of Blackstone. Second, having the breadth and depth of intellectual capital, you know, massive troves of in-house data in order to assess opportunities, you know, with better data, more insights, move more decisively, more conviction, and so forth. And then third, importantly, I think being viewed as, you know, a trusted partner and capital solutions provider, on massive scale to the world's biggest and most important companies that actually need capital partners, which maybe wasn't the view historically. And so turning to someone they, a firm and people they know and trust at senior levels, for private capital market solutions, is really a big asset. And so that, what that results in this example, in the data center area, you know, $100 billion plus opportunity for the firm to be sort of a critical infrastructure provider, to the, you know, to the AI revolution and the most important participants in that. So that's just a bit of a live example. I'd just say in terms of growth, I'd mention different ways. First, for private markets overall, and you all know this, it still is early days. It's basically, private markets today are probably 5% the size of traditional stock and bond market globally. And so they're, you know, we operate in markets of enormous potential, whether it's markets, the markets where we fundraise or the markets where we invest. On the fundraising side, you know, the three pillars are traditional institutions, insurance, individuals, private wealth. On the private wealth side, we've talked about this all the time, an $85 trillion market, still sort of single digit penetration. In insurance, a $40 trillion market. Insurance participants are in the early days of really transforming how they think about asset management and the role of alternatives in that. And then traditional institutions, you asked about allocations. You know, broadly, this is, you know, a more mature area writ large, and in some cases, in some asset classes and some institutions, more fully allocated, perhaps temporarily, as they look for more capital to be returned. But they're still, in aggregate, growing allocations overall, sort of on a global basis, and particularly in areas like private credit. Many, many institutions, traditional institutions, are just getting organized around how to allocate to this area. So and then in the areas where we invest, just big, big market opportunities, whether it's in infrastructure, globally, private credit, which we've talked about, energy transition, life science, the life sciences revolution, and our platform in that. The secondary markets for alternatives broadly, Asia, regionally, both specifically for us, really India and Japan. So the list goes on and on. There's a massive need for private capital globally, and we're, we think we're in really, really well positioned to keep innovating and growing in this area. So that's, that's sort of the framework. Great. Maybe just from the fundraising side, can you talk about kind of the near-term hump, the near-term pipeline? We're kind of towards the end of this $150 billion 18 flagship fund. Yeah. What's coming next? Yeah. What should we be kind of keeping an eye out for? So, you know, really, I think, exciting multiple, you know, near-term engines of growth. As you mentioned, you know, let's take the drawdown area. As you mentioned, we are finishing up several key fundraisers. You know, our real estate, our European real estate fund, real estate debt, our private equity flagship, private equity energy transition, growth equity, infrastructure secondaries, so those are being wrapped up over the coming couple of few quarters, and in 2025, in general, you'll see the full year financial benefit after fee holidays and so forth from those fundraisers, and then staying in drawdowns, we're coming into a new cycle of strategies, drawdown strategies, and really, really compelling sectors and markets where we've had extraordinary performance. So, in Asia, private equity, in secondaries, our flagship private equity secondaries vehicle, in life, the life sciences area, in our opportunistic credit area. So we're really, really excited about the early days of fundraising in areas that have performed really, really well and where there's a lot of secular demand. In the insurance area, you know, we've been growing AUM there, 20%+. We have a $211 billion kind of firm-wide platform. There's significant embedded contractual growth in many cases from our four largest clients, and then we also, with 15 SMAs, you know, which we manage and aim to grow in number and size. And then in our perpetual strategies, on the institutional side, there's infrastructure, which has, you know, tremendous momentum and tailwinds. Started that six years ago. It's $50 billion today in our dedicated equity area. And then in private wealth, you know, really good momentum in terms of flows. We have our three anchor strategies in real estate, in credit, and also private equity now. And then, we are innovating and plan to introduce more products over time. And so, in infrastructure and in the multi-asset credit area, by, I think, early next year, you'll see new products from us in that area. So, it's a really, I think, for us, favorable multiyear picture of growth, and we're excited about it. Great. Me switching gears a little bit. I want to ask you about the broader theme of, bank competition, bank retrenchment. You know, last year the story was around retrenchment. This year it's more around competition, or at least the narrative being discussed by investors. So, you know, how do you see the competitive landscape on the credit side as bank lending has opened back up, and how are you scaling origination to address, you know- Yeah ... what looks like a very large opportunity? Well, first, just stepping back, because I think everyone knows and believes, you know, it's a, it's a really big and growing pie in terms of this market, this opportunity. You know, huge runways. The private credit market grows. You know, private credit AUM, globally, it's about 2%, we think, of the overall global corporate debt market. And if you look at it from the perspective of the investor, in credit, they're really now just, I think, beginning to apply the sort of and understand the liquidity performance trade-off that they understand well on the equity side of their portfolio, on the credit side. So when you look at, like, the traditional 60/40 or 70/30 portfolio between equity and fixed income, the equity - most of the action in our industry has been around penetrating the equity portion. The fixed income portion is sort of barely penetrated, and so that's a big opportunity ahead. I think, in terms of competition, in terms of with banks, it's not a zero-sum game in a growing market. We can coexist and partner. And while, you know, the broadly syndicated market that has been recovering this year, if you just look at some of the stats, last year, I think 90% of sponsor-backed LBOs were financed by private credit. You then saw this year, you know, more of a recovery revival in the broadly syndicated loan market. I think if you look year to date for new LBOs, private credits accounted for, like, 87% of the market. So basically consistent with last year. More of the bank action, to be fair, has been around refinancings. But if you look just fundamentally and structurally, the role of private credit, even in a recovering kind of bank market, it's robust. And I think that's for a good reason. You know, the structural advantages of the private credit model, sort of the partnership model, the long kind of the long-term buy and hold, hold to maturity, you know, sort of storage, not moving model, that's a very compelling thing for borrowers. I think in terms of competition within private credit, while there are more entrants in capital, generally, I think it's important to highlight that there is and will be increasing differentiation within it. There is alpha in private credit. It's not a commodity. And so, I think you're seeing and will increasingly see performance dispersion. Underneath that scale, to us, really matters, and having, you know, really large, expansive capabilities and direct origination in private credit, sub-investment grade credit, is critical. We're one of the two largest alternative managers in credit. We have $420 billion when you include our real estate credit business across the firm. Allows us to do larger transactions, obviously gives us better information. And so if you take the U.S. direct lending market, as an example, I'm going to talk about 3x, 4x, and 5x. If you take our non-traded REIT as an example, the average size of our borrowers, measured by, say, EBITDA, is about three times that of the overall market, 3x larger. Those larger companies, if you look at industry stats, have grown in the last year 4x faster than smaller companies. And if you look at default rates over the last five years, those smaller credits have defaulted at a rate about 5x higher than bigger companies. They're smaller, more fragile, more exposed from a margin standpoint and so forth. So that if you just take the direct lending area, is where we're focused, and that leads to, we believe, differentiated performance. You can actually see it if you line up, you know, the BDC market and just look at the published non-accrual rates. There's really big dispersion already, and we like where we sit in that, and that, we think, will increase over time, and LPs will recognize that. On the origination side, we have a really big platform, as I mentioned, across that $420 billion AUM credit business. It's a combination of internal capabilities, you know, contractual forward flow, relationships with partners, including banks, and ownership of select platforms. And so, that platform is sort of cranking. It'll keep growing, and we feel really good with our ambition, as we said, you know, a year or two ago, to grow just our credit business to $1 trillion of assets over time. Got it. Maybe that's a good segue into insurance, which is kind of under the same umbrella at Blackstone. So can you talk a bit about your insurance model? And you know, you've got a number of strategic partnerships. How does the pipeline look for additional partners there? Again, to put it in perspective, we're the largest, I would call it, non-captive manager of alternative assets for insurance clients at $211 billion as of the end of the second quarter. And if you talk about our model, you know, by non-captive, I mean, we are not an insurance company. We do not consolidate insurance company balance sheet and all of its liabilities. Like the rest of our business, we're a third-party asset manager with a multi-client model, a model that's built to serve multiple clients. We're not. That's because we're not competing in the insurance business with our clients. We're managing assets at an arm's length, and basically, simply, by generating excess spread for them, helping them grow faster. And so that then internal allows you to service and serve multiple clients. So, you know, if you look our in the first half of the year for our insurance clients, we originated or placed $24 billion. And across our clients generated about 185 basis points of excess spread for them versus sort of comparable, comparably rated liquids. So the model is really working and serving our clients, and the growth is following. We're also, as part of a model, we're not, you know, we're not in the spread earnings business with all the ups and downs that come with that, which, you know, with that model, sort of getting even more focus around that as rates continue to move. We like, we like our model. We think it's a winning model, and it's leading to, I think, significant growth with our four sort of most significant clients, our Big Four, we call them, 15 additional SMAs alongside that, and a very interesting pipeline of clients following on that. Got it. So maybe moving on to real estate, you know, can you talk a bit about where we are in the cycle? You know, how does it impact your existing portfolio, the opportunity for new investments? You know, thoughts on, you know, the impact of potentially lower rates in the future. You know, where are we there? So I think in terms of where we are, as we see it, the cyclical recovery in real estate is clearly underway, and the animal spirits I referred to those before are really. We're seeing them stirring in the real estate market. We think there's no better positioned firm in the world to take advantage of that recovery. We've had, you know, obviously, two difficult years prior to this year in a rate sensitive sector because of those historic rate increases. In January, on our earnings call, you know, we said two things. We said real estate values we thought were bottoming and that we would invest more. What's happened since then? Values went up, and we invested a lot. So first, I think, you know, on the value side, after two years of declines, before this year, property prices stabilized and were either stable or higher sequentially every month since then. If you look at, like, the Green Street Private Market Index. On the public market side, you've seen this recovery. I think, the REIT market, you know, is up 12% year to date. So, the cyclical recovery in asset values, in our view is clearly underway. It's driven in no small part by debt being available, lower cost, available in greater quantities, higher LTVs. So we see that momentum. On the second point, on investing, you know, we've deployed or committed year to date over $20 billion in our real estate business. It's nearly sort of three times the deployment rate of the prior year. We're leaning into the same secular themes that we really favor. And so again, you know, we clearly see the animal spirit sort of stirring in the real estate market. In terms of our existing portfolio, you know, what I'd say is sector selection in real estate was the ballgame over the last decade. I don't know if it was the entire ballgame, but it was maybe close to it. And our portfolio construction at extraordinary scale is really some of the, you know, best work I've ever seen our firm do in the 27 years I've been at the firm. While there's still clearly aftershocks in sectors like office, you know, today our portfolio is, and we've talked about this, over 75% in logistics, rental housing, data centers. That was less than 2%, you know, in 2007. B REIT, by the way, has 90% concentration in those three sectors. And within those really good sectors with really good fundamentals, you also see them benefiting from supply dynamics. In logistics and multifamily starts are at or near their lowest levels in nearly 10 years. That will start working through performance over time. And then if you just see, like, the spot market, the acquisition market, buyers for assets, both kind of granular and larger ones, that level of activity, those bid levels, and we're, you know, we're always in the market across our vast portfolio, have really stepped up, with material price improvement alongside that. So look, we've been through many cycles in real estate, and, you know, we do view this as sort of that couple of few year period coming out of cycles. You know, where we've really sowed the seeds to drive long-term performance on which we've built our business. Great. Maybe pivoting to infrastructure for a moment. You talked about infrastructure as a kind of key investing theme at scale. You know, your perpetual strategy, BIP, recently crossed the $50 billion milestone, so you know, from a fundraising, we're asking about a more specific fund, but, you know, do you see this continuing to scale as it is, and then, just as we're kind of tactically thinking about our models, you know, can you kind of remind us what the FRPR process is for 2024 and beyond, and how should we kind of calibrate expectations for that one? You know, infrastructure is, as I mentioned, as you know, you know, a global market of incredible importance and attractive growth. I think, alternative investing within infrastructure was, you know, less than $10 billion 20 years ago, and now it's, you know, now it's over $1 trillion. We've been investing in infrastructure as a firm over 20 years, initially in our opportunistic drawdown funds. Our dedicated, you know, infrastructure strategy anchors an overall Blackstone platform across the firm in infrastructure, both equity and debt, which exceeds $100 billion. So we're really proud of what we built in our equity area, which I mentioned before, which in 6 years has grown to $50 billion, basically from the ground up. We have a really, I think, amazing portfolio concentrated in three broad sectors: digital infrastructure, energy transition, and transportation globally. So within that, you know, we have, as I mentioned, the largest U.S. data center platform, the largest Asia data center platform now, the largest private renewables developer in the U.S., the largest toll road operator in Europe, the largest port operator in the U.S. So these are really big scale assets, and the performance has been really good, 16% net since inception. I think in terms of just where we go from here, I mentioned this maybe in public before. I sort of analogize to the real estate playbook that we've executed for the last, you know, two, three decades, where... And I get they both live within this real estate-real asset rubric, infrastructure and real estate. But in terms of growing the business across multiple dimensions, you know, between asset classes, you know, equity and debt, geography, the U.S., Europe, Asia, the risk- return spectrum, you know, within that, between core, core plus opportunistic, and then channels, including private wealth, where I referenced, the introduction of a product there in infrastructure. So it's just a really exciting playbook. We have amazing leadership in that area, and we have very big ambitions. On fee-related performance revenues, we do, as you, I think, know, have a significant, scheduled crystallization in the fourth quarter. That will crystallize the substantial majority of what you, you know, saw in the second quarter in our net accrued performance revenue sort of table in our earnings report. You know, it was nearly just around $500 billion, $500 million, excuse me, then. So the vast majority of that will crystallize in the fourth quarter and then crystallize and then another significant crystallization, you know, three years hence. But then in the meantime, starting in the middle of next year, as this open-ended fund sort of has layered in over time, new investors, you'll see in most quarters, a initially smaller but recurring and growing, you know, stream in between large scale real realizations in the meantime. So yes, the fourth quarter will be a big event for a well-performing vehicle. Got it. Maybe a couple of final questions, sort of more internal looking at Blackstone. So, you know, you always talk about how important people and culture are to the company's success. So how do you think about attracting high-quality talents, making sure they stay as the firm, you know, continues to move past the, you know, the $1 trillion milestone? Yeah, so, you know, we take a very long-term view and always have to building the firm. You know, our goal, as I've said before, is not just to be a really good asset manager, but to be one of the best companies in the world, and one of the best employers in the world. Steve Schwarzman, you know, has led us every step of the way. And what I'd say is, what he has always focused on, and therefore our firm has embodied that, is building an enduring institution, you know, with a focus on quality and excellence in everything we do. If I had to really describe what it's like on the inside, that's what it's like. That's what it's like in everything we do, big things, little things, around making investments, around how we treat our clients, how we treat our people, how we treat counterparties, and so forth. So, it just pervades, you know, everything we do. For our people, you know, what all this has meant, I think, is the combination of that growthfulness, and I think a very meritocratic and well-managed firm, you know, has led to opportunity. And so, you know, I like to say our basic bargain with our people is it doesn't matter if you've been there 27 years or 27 weeks, that if you come in and do a good job, you will have an open-ended, uncapped, you know, career opportunity that's under your control because of that growthfulness and meritocracy. And I think that bargain, you know, has held up pretty well. And it's our commitment to continue that. And then I'd just say broadly, you know, our culture and what's distinctive about it, I think, is really that it's a culture of both performance and innovation. And so it's, as you all know, I think it's pretty unusual for a good investor to also be a good business builder. It's hard. It's even harder, I think, for to institutionalize that, to have a firm, a business, that's, like, good at investing and also good at innovating and growing, and harder still to basically sustain that over time. And so, we're going to keep working at it, but I think that's what, you know, has been a North Star for us culturally. Got it. Maybe just one final question, again, kind of thinking internally at Blackstone. So how involved are you in overseeing technology investments? You know, how do you think about implementing new technologies like AI to kind of perform the business? What are the opportunities like there? Yeah, our Chief Technology Officer, John Stecher, who's terrific, used to be at Barclays, is your CTO, reports to me, so the function is under me. Broadly speaking, it's an amazing group of people. But I'd just step back and say, like, a couple of things. One, you know, I think, when you think about data and AI and so forth, we'll talk private markets and scale. I think private markets are advantaged, and I think the rise of these technologies will reinforce the advantages of investors in private markets. I'm sorry to say that to a lot of investors in public markets, but I think when you think about investing in public markets where you're more limited around the four corners of publicly available data, which will be more commoditized, more quickly processed, and so forth, versus investing in a private market platform, importantly, at a firm of our scale, where you benefit from the insights and learnings from an integration of the data that you possess around your private portfolio's performance longitudinally across businesses and so forth. If you get that right, we think that's a big advantage over time. I think from a just how we think about our technology strategy and AI specifically, we do think about it first at the level of, you know, how do we make our firm more productive operationally, both our, you know, middle and back office, but also sort of our investment process. Second, you know, how do we harness that better data better for our revenue generation, for both our investing, making better investment decisions, I should say, and also, importantly, helping our portfolio company. So we have a team of 50+ people in sort of data science. We just hired former head of Walmart's applied AI area. And so we're really focusing on with our portfolio companies, focusing on where there may be disruption and then focusing on where there may be opportunities. So that's obviously an enormous thing. And then, alongside that, just looking at the investment opportunities that may come out of it itself. And so I talked about data centers and AI infrastructure. And so, for us, there are ways to play it and not ways to play it. The very early stages of sort of native AI companies is probably for a different, you know, for a different domain of investors. But for us, we see an enormous opportunity around using our scale platform to be, as I mentioned before, like a really significant capital solution provider to the most important players, you know, in a transformational time. So we're really excited about it. It's all a work in progress, but we feel like we're remarkably well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that arise. All right. Well, we're just about out of time here, but Michael, thank you so much. What a pleasure to have you, and we really appreciate it.