BlackRock CEO Frames AI as Defining Force in Economic Growth

BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink released his annual letter to investors Monday (March 23), framing artificial intelligence as the most important technological development since the computer and a structural force already transforming capital markets, investment strategy, and the global competition for economic growth.

Fink described the current period as one defined by “the advent of the most significant technology since, at least, the computer,” and positioned AI alongside the reordering of global trade as a force changing how wealth is created and where capital flows.

The letter’s treatment of AI centers on its role in driving value via markets. Fink wrote that transformative technologies create enormous value, and that much of that value accrues to the companies that build and deploy them and to the investors who own them. He wrote capital markets participation, not proximity to the technology itself, as the main mechanism through which investors and nations capture that value.

Fink wrote that AI is central to strategic competition between the United States and China, and that U.S. AI leadership is not optional, requiring sustained investment in research, infrastructure, talent and the capital markets capable of financing innovation at scale. That framing positions AI as both an investment thesis and a national economic priority, demanding long-duration capital commitment.

Fink devoted a significant portion of the letter to how AI is changing the practice of investing, not just the assets being invested in. He wrote that long before generative AI captured the public imagination, advances in data science and computing were already changing how investors analyze markets, manage risk, and allocate capital, giving rise to systematic investing, an approach that uses large datasets, research-driven models, and disciplined processes to evaluate thousands of securities consistently and at scale.

Fink closed his AI argument on a forward-looking note, treating the technology’s economic impact as settled and the strategic question as one of participation. “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,” Fink wrote.

The letter calls for making long-term investing easier, broader and more accessible as the mechanism through which more people share in that growth, framing broadened market access as the policy response commensurate with the scale of AI-powered value creation ahead.

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