Rob Goldstein has never strayed far from his native Brooklyn. After graduating from college in 1994, he took a job at a then-up-and-coming New York City financial firm called BlackRock, which has since become one of the world’s biggest financial giants. Goldstein has spent his entire career at the firm and has risen to the rank of COO.
One year removed from his 30th anniversary at BlackRock, Goldstein told Fortune that he still views his company as a startup, which might seem an odd statement considering its market cap of nearly $170 billion. But in a private event hosted at BlackRock’s Hudson Yards headquarters on Monday, Goldstein celebrated what he described as BlackRock’s “challenger mindset” by debuting a wall featuring the dozens of patents the company has earned over its 37-year history.
As companies grow larger, the creep of bureaucracy is inevitable and innovation suffers, which helps explain why the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company lasts just 15 years. Goldstein says BlackRock has managed to buck the trend through its constant release of new products, from its portfolio management software platform Aladdin to its Bitcoin ETF, which launched in early 2024 and became the fastest-growing ETF in history.
“In an increasingly complex world, the ability to provide things that are more simple from the client perspective—I would argue those are the most powerful business models,” Goldstein said.
‘Shiny new toy’
BlackRock’s foray into the world of cryptocurrencies is perhaps the best example of the company's “challenger” approach. As other traditional financial operations, from banks to brokerage platforms, tiptoe into the sector, BlackRock helped lead the way through its successful application for a Bitcoin ETF, alongside 10 other firms.
The crypto asset manager Grayscale paved the path through its litigation against the Securities and Exchange Commission for approval. Still, BlackRock’s heft and track record—and the endorsement of its CEO, Larry Fink, even as other peers like Jamie Dimon disparage crypto—helped lend credibility to the product. The launch proved massively successful, with BlackRock’s IBIT ETF hitting $50 billion in assets under management in just 228 days—a milestone that made it the fastest-growing ETF of all time.
Despite BlackRock’s willingness to enter a volatile sector, Goldstein emphasized that the company had long tracked the technology, led by current head of digital assets Robert Mitchnick, and former exec Mary-Catherine Lader, who has since become a COO herself at the influential crypto firm Uniswap Labs.
“The nature of any industry, but particularly financial services, is it’s very easy to get enamored by the shiny new toy,” Goldstein told Fortune. “We want to make sure that toy has been beat up quite a fair bit before we get enamored with it."
With crypto ascendant under President Trump, Goldstein said that BlackRock is exploring further products in the space. The company already manages a reserve fund for the leading U.S. stablecoin issuer, Circle, and manages a tokenized money market fund called BUIDL.
Goldstein said that he sees further opportunities with stablecoins, which he described as a “more frictionless way of moving cash around,” as well as tokenization, or the process of creating digital versions of financial assets using blockchain technology. Fink has publicly argued that tokenization will “democratize” investing by lowering costs and broadening available asset classes. BlackRock’s goal is to be able to offer these products to its clients through its investment platform Aladdin, including partnerships with Coinbase and Circle.
“If we want to be the whole portfolio provider, we need to be able to have that bridge between this new world, this alternative universe, and the traditional world through Aladdin,” Goldstein told Fortune.
In his view, one of the key unlocks of blockchain technology is risk and data transparency. “We’re just scratching the surface,” he said.
The road ahead
While crypto may be the shiny new toy in financial services, the sector still represents a fraction of BlackRock’s overall business. Its long list of patents includes more technical products, including smart order routing technology for corporate bond sales and AI-powered compliance tools.
Goldstein said the major trend moving forward is private markets, including the growing field of private credit, as well as infrastructure investments in assets like data centers. In September, BlackRock announced a partnership with Microsoft and the Emirati investment firm MGX to make new investments in data centers to meet accelerating energy demands from artificial intelligence, with $100 billion in total investment potential including private equity capital and debt financing.
“It’s very clear that private capital is going to need to play a much greater role in investing,” Goldstein told Fortune.
