BlackRock and RedBlack each rolled out new technology capabilities for alternative investments on Wednesday, with one expanding the data and analytics available to institutional investors and the other giving financial advisors a more direct path to trade alternatives from within their existing workflow.
BlackRock's Aladdin business unveiled an expanded suite of private credit capabilities built into Preqin, the private-markets data provider BlackRock acquired last year. Separately, RedBlack, a rebalancing and trading platform, announced it has integrated with CAIS, the alternative investment marketplace, becoming the first order management system to do so.
The back-to-back announcements come as advisor demand for alternatives has outpaced the operational infrastructure needed to support it, creating a gap that wealth technology firms are now moving quickly to close.
The CAIS-RedBlack integration takes direct aim at operational friction faced by financial advisors navigating client demand for private markets exposure. Through the new connection, advisors can view funds available on the CAIS platform from within RedBlack, create orders using models or manual entry, apply the same compliance and allocation controls they use for traditional securities, and monitor order status on RedBlack's trade blotter – all without toggling between systems.
"Advisors want access to alternatives without introducing new operational hurdles," Brendan Cuddihy, chief operating officer at CAIS, said in a statement. "By integrating with RedBlack's rebalancing and trading management tools into the CAIS platform, advisors can more easily allocate, transact, and monitor alternatives alongside traditional investments."
"As advisors increase allocations to alternatives, operational complexity has become one of the biggest barriers to scale," RedBlack chief revenue officer Jennifer Valdez added. "This integration with CAIS brings alternatives directly into the rebalancing and trading workflow advisors already rely on, while preserving allocation intent, compliance controls and execution efficiency. It's a meaningful step forward in unifying portfolio management across asset classes."
The integration supports straight-through processing with real-time status visibility and automatically maintains allocation targets and available cash – a feature firms are likely to appreciate as they scale their alternatives business.
The challenges on the data and analytics side are equally real. Private credit in particular has grown rapidly but remained difficult to benchmark and analyze consistently. BlackRock's Aladdin is now attempting to solve for that sticking point through Preqin.
The enhancements to Preqin Pro expand private credit data across closed-end funds, business development companies and semi-liquid vehicles, and introduce asset-level benchmarks that standardize performance comparisons across metrics including money multiples, leverage ratios, defaults and recoveries, and borrower financials. The platform also adds AI-powered analytics that allow users to interrogate market, fund and asset data within a single environment.
"Private credit is becoming a core part of portfolios, but the data remains fragmented, making it difficult for investors to understand their risk and benchmark their performance," said Kunal Khara, global head of Aladdin product at BlackRock. "This expansion brings together Aladdin technology with Preqin and eFront data and analytics to create a more unified, transparent and robust view of private credit."
The Preqin expansion is the first in a planned series of product enhancements, according to BlackRock. The Aladdin platform – which includes eFront, Aladdin Wealth and Preqin – is central to BlackRock's strategy of positioning itself not just as an asset manager but as a technology provider to the broader investment industry. Financial advisors following the evolution of wealth tech have watched Aladdin's build-out closely as the firm integrates its Preqin acquisition into a unified data layer.
The timing of both announcements is notable. Demand for alternatives among retail and high-net-worth investors has climbed steadily, but the infrastructure to support that demand has lagged. Amid a growing push to democratize private markets – a rallying cry that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has lent his voice to – technology is emerging as the critical bottleneck.
Both integrations represent an effort to eliminate that gap. Whether the focus is on benchmarking BDC performance or placing a private fund subscription without leaving a rebalancing tool, the goal is the same: make alternatives feel less like a workaround and more like a standard part of the portfolio management process. Advisors building out their alternatives practices will want to take note of both developments.
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