📺 Netflix eyes Radford Studios at 80%+ discount
🖥️ Blackstone's data center empire tops $150B
💰 CBRE profit nearly doubles on data center boom
🔧 Upcoming Workshops: LinkedIn for GPs, Building the Zero-Employee Property Manager

Data Viz of the Week: The Solar Boom Continues

Tax credits or not, the US solar boom continues unabated. This year, solar is likely to provide more than 10% of US electricity. Texas is leading the charge, with solar generation there up 44% year-over-year.

Notably, Texas recently passed California to be the largest producer of solar energy in the United States. This demonstrates that decarbonization is less about climate-friendly sentiment than it is about making it easy to build.

Upcoming Thesis Driven Courses & Workshops

• 📣 Last Call - April 29: Workshop: LinkedIn Strategy for GPs (💻 Online): ​​A live, practical workshop for real estate GPs, operators, and fund managers who want to use LinkedIn intentionally—as a capital formation tool, not a vanity channel - $299

• 📣 Last Call - April 30: Workshop: Building the Zero-Employee Property Manager (💻 Online): A live interactive workshop for owners, operators, and asset managers exploring how close we really are to running multifamily properties with little—or no—full-time staff - $299

• May 6: Workshop: Raising Capital from Family Offices (💻 Online): ​​A 2-hour interactive workshop designed for real estate sponsors, entrepreneurs, and capital raisers looking to raise capital from family offices. - $299

• May 12: Workshop: Building & Funding Student Housing (💻 Online): ​​A two-hour interactive workshop designed for real estate investors, developers, and capital allocators who want to understand—and invest in—the purpose-built student housing (PBSH) asset class. - $299

Three Articles We Loved from Last Week

It’s not easy keeping up with everything. Here are three articles we loved from the past week that you may have missed:

1. (The Real Deal) Netflix Moves to Buy Radford Studio Center for Fraction of 2021 Price Netflix is in talks to acquire the iconic Radford Studio Center in Studio City for between $330M and $400M — less than a third of the $1.85B that Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital paid for the lot in 2021. The property was handed over to lenders led by Goldman Sachs earlier this year after Hackman defaulted on the loan. The 30-acre lot includes roughly 360K SF of soundstages, 356K SF of production support, and 564K SF of office — but was only 61% leased as of September, with half the remaining leases expiring by year-end. If it closes, it's one of the starkest examples yet of post-pandemic valuation resets in entertainment real estate.

2. (CoStar) Blackstone Launches Data Center REIT in Bet on AI Boom Blackstone's data center portfolio has topped $150B globally, with an additional $160B pipeline — making it one of the single largest drivers of the firm's returns as broader real estate faces headwinds. On the Q1 earnings call, the firm disclosed that its overall real estate AUM dipped to $315B from $320B a year ago, reflecting harvesting activity and core-plus outflows. But the data center bet is only getting bigger: Blackstone filed for an IPO of Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust (BXDC), a new REIT designed to acquire hyperscaler-leased data centers, targeting a roughly $2B raise. It's a clear signal that Blackstone sees AI infrastructure as the asset class of the cycle — and wants public market capital to scale it further.

3. (CoStar) CBRE Posts Biggest Quarterly Profit Gain in Nearly Four Years CBRE nearly doubled its net income in Q1 to $318M (up 95% YoY), driven overwhelmingly by its data center and infrastructure business. Revenue hit $10.5B, up from $8.9B, and the firm raised its full-year earnings guidance by 20%. The standout: Trammell Crow Co.'s development arm posted more than $900M in unrealized gains in Q1 — nearly a third of the division's full-year 2025 profit — largely from data center land development delivered earlier than expected. CBRE's infrastructure services alone generated nearly $950M in Q1 revenue. The message from CRE's largest services firm is clear: data centers aren't a side bet anymore — they're the main event.

Developer of the Week: Switch

Data center developer Switch secured a novel $2.6 billion credit facility with 11 banks specifically designed to provide upfront cash for power infrastructure payments — a first-of-its-kind financing structure addressing one of the biggest bottlenecks in data center development.

As AI demand explodes and utilities require large advance payments to secure grid capacity, Switch's innovative vehicle signals a new financing model that could reshape how the entire data center sector funds power procurement.

You can read more about Switch on the Thesis Driven GP database here.

Investor of the Week: Mansueto Office

Mansueto Office is the Chicago-based single-family office of Joe Mansueto, the founder and executive chairman of Morningstar, Inc. and a Forbes-listed billionaire with a net worth north of $6.7B. This isn't a passive check-writing operation — the firm runs a dedicated real estate team led by Ari Glass (Head of RE, 28 years of CRE experience) and Ted Fahey (VP of RE, 15 years of principal investing and investment banking), deploying evergreen principal capital on a deal-by-deal basis with no fund structure, no LP base, and no fund-cycle pressure.

The portfolio reads like a greatest hits of architecturally significant Chicago real estate. Mansueto Office acquired the iconic Wrigley Building on North Michigan Avenue for $255M in 2018, followed by the Belden Stratford — a landmark Lincoln Park residential hotel purchased for $106M and repositioned from a Class B- apartment building into a 209-unit luxury Class A community with updated units and expansive lakefront views. The firm added the Waldorf Astoria Chicago at a COVID-era discount of $54.5M, picking up the 215-room Gold Coast luxury hotel at a fraction of replacement cost. Across every deal, the thesis is consistent: acquire distinctive properties with lasting financial and social value, reposition where the opportunity exists, and hold for the long term. While Chicago remains home base, the firm partners with operators nationally and is open to JV equity and co-GP structures across multifamily, hotel, and commercial — making them an unusually patient and well-capitalized partner for value-add deals that need principal-level conviction rather than committee-driven approvals.

Get more details on Mansueto, including team contacts, deal activity, and investment preferences, inside the CapitalStack database.

—Brad and Paul