Blackstone is divesting up to $1.25 billion of its stake in Knowledge Realty Trust through a block sale scheduled for next week, according to reporting on the transaction.
The offer for sale will take place in India's real estate investment trust market, where Blackstone has built substantial holdings in the data center-focused property company. Knowledge Realty Trust owns and operates infrastructure properties across Indian cities, leasing space primarily to technology and cloud service operators.
Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager with roughly $1 trillion in assets under management, has been active in India's real estate sector over the past five years. The firm deployed capital into Knowledge Realty Trust as part of a broader strategy to capture growth in India's data center market, which has expanded rapidly alongside cloud adoption and AI infrastructure buildout across the region.
Block sales of this scale typically occur when a large shareholder seeks liquidity without routing the transaction through standard exchange mechanisms. The offer for sale structure allows qualified institutional buyers to bid on the stake during a defined window, with the final transaction price determined by market demand.
The $1.25 billion stake represents a material position in the trust. Blackstone is trimming exposure to certain Indian real estate assets.
India's REIT market has grown to roughly $10 billion in market capitalization since regulatory approval in 2014. Data center REITs have attracted significant foreign capital due to India's position as a lower-cost alternative to developed markets for AI training and cloud infrastructure.
Blackstone's exit size represents one-eighth of India's total REIT market capitalization. The number to watch is whether the block sale executes at a premium or discount to Knowledge Realty Trust's prevailing market price, which would indicate investor appetite for data center infrastructure exposure in the region.
