Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT) continued to reshape its real estate portfolio during the second quarter of 2026, exiting its remaining self-storage holdings while directing billions of dollars toward data center development.
At the end of the first quarter, BREIT still owned 79 self-storage properties totaling approximately 5 million square feet, with a gross asset value of approximately $831 million. During the second quarter, the nontraded REIT sold the remaining portfolio, effectively eliminating self-storage as one of its property sectors. The move continues a multiyear reduction in BREIT’s exposure to the sector. In 2023, BREIT sold its Simply Self Storage platform to Public Storage for $2.2 billion.
At the same time, BREIT has been directing significant capital toward data centers through QTS, the data center operator Blackstone acquired in 2021. BREIT reported deploying approximately $5.7 billion into pre-leased QTS data center developments during the first six months of 2026, including approximately $2.4 billion during the first quarter. That implies roughly $3.3 billion of deployment during the second quarter. BREIT said the developments are supported by strong leasing demand and noted that its QTS investment represented 22.5% of BREIT’s real estate asset value as of March 31.
The shift reflects the increasingly prominent role of data centers within BREIT’s portfolio. As of March 31, 2026, data centers represented approximately $28.8 billion in gross asset value, making the sector BREIT’s second-largest property type behind rental housing and ahead of industrial real estate. BREIT’s data center portfolio included 136 properties and was reported as 100% occupied at quarter-end.
The strategy also aligns with Blackstone’s broader investment thesis around artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure. Blackstone has identified AI-related investments as an important source of growth across its portfolio, with QTS serving as one of its most significant exposures to rising computing and data infrastructure demand. Reuters reported in July that nine of Blackstone’s ten largest appreciating investments were tied to AI, while BREIT’s allocation to data centers had increased substantially in recent years.
For BREIT investors, the transactions illustrate a notable evolution in portfolio composition: capital is moving away from a relatively small self-storage allocation and toward an asset class Blackstone believes can benefit from the long-term expansion of cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
