Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman said the firm’s massive bet on artificial intelligence came down to a chance encounter more than 10 years ago.

Schwarzman was in China in 2015 when he found himself seated next to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founder Jack Ma on a bus, he said in an interview on Bloomberg TV’s . Ma struck up a conversation with Schwarzman about the technology, “and I literally had no idea what he was talking about,” he said.

“He explained that this would be the most consequential technological change, which would change the world,” Schwarzman said.

That meeting ultimately reshaped the $1.3 trillion alternative investment firm, which invests in the technology through every division it operates. It oversees a $200 billion data-center empire, is building a cloud venture with Google, holds stakes in labs like OpenAI and lends against Broadcom Inc. and Nvidia Corp. chips. It’s also committing capital to power plants and data-center cooling equipment.

In addition, Blackstone is embedding AI into the hundreds of real-economy businesses it controls, largely through Ode with Anthropic, an enterprise consulting firm it established in partnership with Anthropic PBC, private equity firm Hellman & Friedman and a wider investor consortium. And the technology is slowly reshaping the firm’s own operations: A model now weighs in on proposed investments.

As the largest data center landlord in the country, Blackstone has been thrust into sensitive political territory as unease about job losses and the dangers of runaway AI are building. The growing backlash against vast, power-hungry data centers has already derailed some Blackstone projects.

Meanwhile, some large investors are concerned the boom in capital spending could turn to bust, as recent market moves show. And institutional investors are worried about how their exposure to a single dominant theme is soaring across both public and private markets — a challenge that is intensifying as Blackstone and rivals such as Apollo Global Management Inc., Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and KKR & Co. push deeper into AI.

Schwarzman pointed to past technological advances to show that they can sometimes take years to become profitable — but they ultimately prove to be lucrative, especially for early investors.

“In 1882, Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb, and to make it useful, you basically had to build a grid,” Schwarzman said, adding that the process took some 40 years.

“Nobody knew about radio; nobody knew about television; nobody ever thought about that when they were building out the grid,” he said. “We’re in the early innings of this.”Schwarzman, a lifelong Republican, also commented on the heated political environment, with the US midterm elections just weeks away.

“I think it’s difficult being in any of these political parties today, because there used to be some large center of the country, and I’m part of that,” he said. “We’ve gotten into a place now where people don’t listen to each other, and I think this is exceptionally unfortunate and challenges the country. We need to get back to a balanced center.”