This week we’re looking at BlackRock, the $10 trillion financial titan that quietly moves the global economy. From index funds to infrastructure, it manages more wealth than most nations’ GDPs combined. But in 2025, even BlackRock is reengineering itself. Cutting jobs, shifting strategy, and refocusing its future around private markets and artificial intelligence.

At first glance, a 1% workforce reduction and internal restructuring might seem routine. But for a company that helped define the modern era of finance but when you take a deeper look, it shows it’s about rediscovering their focus for the next decade.

BlackRock’s latest moves show that even the most data-driven, process-perfect institutions must reexamine their structure if they want to last another generation.

BlackRock began in 1988 with eight partners, a handful of borrowed desks, and a big idea: that risk management not speculation would define the next era of investing.

Its founder, Larry Fink, had learned the hard way. Years earlier, as an executive at First Boston, Fink had built a profitable mortgage-backed securities business until a bet on interest rates went sideways, costing the bank $100 million and his own reputation. That failure became his foundation.

He left to build something better: a firm that combined investing with deep analytical discipline. BlackRock’s innovation wasn’t just financial; it was technological. From the start, the company developed a system to track and measure every risk in its portfolios, a platform that would later become Aladdin, the beating heart of global finance.

Today, Aladdin monitors trillions of dollars in assets across thousands of institutions from pension funds and sovereign wealth funds to insurance companies and governments. It’s not just BlackRock’s internal tool; it’s a product used by competitors. In a sense, BlackRock doesn’t just participate in the markets it powers them.

The firm grew relentlessly through the 1990s and 2000s, pioneering the low-cost investing revolution. Its 2009 acquisition of Barclays Global Investors gave it control of the iShares ETF platform, transforming it into a household name for passive investing. That deal marked the moment BlackRock became not just an asset manager, but an economic institution.

By the 2010s, its scale was staggering: hundreds of funds, millions of clients, and data flows influencing nearly every corner of capital markets. But as with any empire, the bigger you get, the slower you move and the more vulnerable you become to changing tides.

For much of the last decade, BlackRock could do no wrong. The rise of ETFs, the spread of index investing, and a long bull market created a perfect ecosystem for its growth.

Yet scale breeds complexity. Managing $10 trillion means managing hundreds of product lines, regulatory regimes, and economic cycles simultaneously. As markets shifted, BlackRock found itself caught in a paradox: it was both too big to fail and too big to grow.

Competitors like Vanguard began matching its low-cost products, while boutique firms nibbled at niches like ESG and private equity. Meanwhile, investors started demanding higher returns and more customization, a challenge for a firm whose success came from standardized products.

By 2024, cracks were showing. BlackRock’s growth had slowed. Regulatory scrutiny increased. And internally, leaders questioned whether the firm had stretched too far. It was time for a reset.

In early 2025, BlackRock announced it would reduce its global workforce by about 1%, roughly 600 jobs. The cuts weren’t massive, but they were symbolic — a public acknowledgment that even the biggest machine in finance needed maintenance.

At the same time, CEO Larry Fink laid out a strategic realignment built on three pillars:

BlackRock is moving from the era of broad-market dominance to one of precision leadership. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, it’s choosing where to compete and where to collaborate.

One key move came in September 2025, when Citigroup selected BlackRock to manage roughly $80 billion in assets as it restructured its wealth unit. The partnership underscored how BlackRock’s scale and technology can serve even its peers a rare example of a competitor outsourcing management to another.

At the same time, BlackRock’s leadership began pouring resources into AI infrastructure, seeking to blend human expertise with machine learning to improve risk modeling, client service, and portfolio construction. Fink described it as the “next Aladdin moment” — a chance to reinvent how the world understands and measures risk.

This mix of automation and adaptation signals a shift in identity: from being the backbone of financial markets to becoming their nervous system.

What makes this moment so important isn’t the job cuts or the partnerships, it’s the mindset behind them.

When companies reach a certain scale, they face a trap: the very systems that made them great begin to slow their evolution. They start optimizing instead of imagining. It’s a recognition that stability without reinvention is stagnation.

Larry Fink often says that the future of finance will belong to those who can combine technology, data, and judgment. That’s the paradox of being “built to last” in the digital age: your foundation must be strong, but your structure must stay flexible.

BlackRock’s strength is in its willingness to question its own design. It’s doing what legacy firms often avoid: rewiring itself before the world forces the change.

The average company responds to pressure with panic. Great companies respond with precision.

BlackRock’s 2025 realignment isn’t a retreat; it’s a recalibration. A deliberate tightening of focus after decades of expansion. It’s what healthy institutions do when they value endurance over ego.

As markets evolve, so must the systems that sustain them. For BlackRock, that means turning its scale into agility and proving that even giants can still learn to move fast.

That’s it for this week’s edition of Built to Last!

Who should we feature next week? Is there a company you think embodies the same balance of legacy and reinvention? Reply to this email or comment on our latest post to share your pick.

Thanks for reading, sharing, and helping grow the Built to Last community.

Until next time, keep building things meant to last.

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