BlackRock

When your technology platform manages triple your own assets, you're not just a participant in the ecosystem - you're the infrastructure. BlackRock manages $13.46 trillion in assets (Q3 2025), making it the world's largest asset manager. But Aladdin, BlackRock's risk management and portfolio analytics platform, manages $21 trillion across 200+ institutional clients including CalPERS ($260B), Deutsche Bank (€900B), and Prudential ($700B). This is keystone mutualism at financial scale: BlackRock provides the connective tissue that makes global asset management function.

The power comes from network effects meeting path dependence. Every institution using Aladdin improves the platform's risk models through data aggregation. Every new client increases Aladdin's value to existing clients through better benchmarking and market intelligence. But replacing Aladdin means rebuilding technology infrastructure, retraining staff, migrating years of data, and losing interoperability with counterparties. The combination creates structural lock-in that feels less like vendor relationship and more like ecological dependency - you can't easily swap out the mycorrhizal network your forest relies on.

BlackRock's 2025 growth came from multiple sources: $205 billion in quarterly inflows, record iShares ETF performance, crypto ETF revenue of $187 million (with IBIT bitcoin fund hitting $76 billion in 18 months), and the $12 billion HPS Investment Partners acquisition adding $165 billion in private credit AUM. The firm now manages assets across equities, fixed income, alternatives, and crypto - diversification that reduces single-market dependency while increasing systemic importance. The biological lesson: true keystone power doesn't come from being the biggest organism. It comes from being the mechanism other organisms can't function without - and making that dependency too expensive to escape.