Infrastructure Investor is one of the private markets industry’s primary publications covering infrastructure dealmaking, fundraising, and performance. Each year, its editorial board selects winners across a set of categories designed to recognize the firms, funds, and transactions that shaped the global infrastructure sector during the prior twelve months. For the 2025 cycle, Blue Owl Capital collected four of those awards — more than any competing firm in the digital infrastructure space.
Understanding the awards requires understanding how the editorial board evaluates each category, because the criteria differ significantly depending on whether the judges are assessing an investor, a deal, or an innovator. More details about Blue Owl’s award submissions and achievements can be found through www.annualreports.com/Company/blue-owl-capital-inc.
How Infrastructure Investor selects its winners
Investor of the Year categories prioritize a firm’s activities during the 12-month judging period. Editors look at fund closes, completed and announced deals, and other significant milestones. Deal of the Year categories focus on transactions of particular size and industry impact — not just the dollar amount, but how much the transaction moved the broader market. Innovator of the Year targets milestones that have helped advance the asset class in a distinctive way.
Each category uses editorial judgment, not a scoring formula. The editors review submissions, weigh them against the published criteria, and make their selections. Background on the company and its strategic initiatives is available at the company’s investor relations page.
Blue Owl Capital’s four winning categories, broken down
Blue Owl won Global Digital Infrastructure Investor of the Year and North America Digital Infrastructure Investor of the Year — both recognizing the firm’s overall position in data center and fiber investing. The platform managed $15.4 billion in digital infrastructure AUM as of Q3 2025, backed by 75-plus dedicated investment professionals and more than 100 operational or under-construction facilities. Over the course of the year, the firm’s data center leasing activity accounted for an estimated 40% of total global capacity leased — roughly 4.5 gigawatts out of 11.3 gigawatts industry-wide.
North America Deal of the Year went to the Hyperion campus financing — the $27 billion joint venture with Meta Platforms to develop a data center campus in Louisiana. The finance.yahoo.com/news/blue-owl-capital-owl-surpasses-114726242.html resource provides market perspective on the firm’s performance relative to benchmarks.
Global Innovator of the Year recognized the structural approach Blue Owl Capital took to that deal and others, including the Gigabit Fiber majority investment and the broader expansion of what a digital infrastructure platform could encompass. Details on the strategic equity secondaries strategy announcement are available via prnewswire.com/news-releases/blue-owl-capital-closes-inaugural-strategic-equity-secondaries-strategy.
Combined with three PERE awards — Global Net Lease Investor, Global Data Center Investor, and Global Retail Real Estate Investor of the Year — the four Infrastructure Investor honors brought Blue Owl Capital’s total to seven for 2025. No other real assets manager matched that count.
