Aladdin's Clients Are the CompetitionWide moat

The technology business sells to insurance companies, pension funds, banks, wealth platforms and other asset managers. That last category is what makes it remarkable: firms competing with BlackRock for mandates run those mandates on BlackRock's system, and pay for the privilege.

It earned $1,981 million in 2025, up 24%, with annual contract value growing 31% including Preqin and 16% without¹. The revenue is contracted and recurring, and it does not move with markets — which in a company where the rest of the revenue is a percentage of asset values makes it worth more than its 8% share of the total suggests.

The relationship is genuinely different from every other client relationship in the firm. An asset management client can leave at the end of a notice period. A technology client is embedded: the platform is the book of record, the risk system, the trade processing and the reporting, and replacing it takes years and threatens continuity of the client's own operations. That is the strongest switching cost BlackRock has anywhere.

It is also the relationship with the most structural tension. Every one of these clients would prefer, all else equal, not to depend on a competitor for critical infrastructure — and the tension is sharper still in private markets, where Preqin's data covers deals that BlackRock's own funds bid on.

Rated wide, on the switching cost, with the caveat that the moat here is captivity rather than affection. The clients stay because leaving is hard, and a competitor with a genuinely better product would eventually be worth the pain.