Apollo Global Management is establishing a new office in Austin, Texas, to house the firm’s push into emerging technology and support its next stage of growth. Eric Needleman, partner and head of Apollo Capital Solutions, and Mike Downing, co-president of Athene USA and chief operating officer of the Apollo’s annuities division, Athene Holding, will lead the office.
The Austin office is designed to incubate new business lines across Apollo’s asset management and retirement solutions platform, with an emphasis on product development, distribution, infrastructure, and market-making. Apollo also plans to use the site to advance its technology and operations work, positioning the firm near companies driving advances in the sector.
The office builds on nearly 20 years of partnerships Apollo has cultivated in the state; Texas is already one of the firm’s top five sources of capital. Apollo said the Austin location taps into a talent base separate from its other offices, even as New York remains its global headquarters.
The expansion also places Apollo alongside some of the largest institutional allocators in the country. Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO), and the Employees Retirement System of Texas are all based in Austin.
Texas Teachers, a $235 billion pension fund, added more than $543 million across private equity, real estate, and energy managers in June alone. UTIMCO, an $88 billion endowment, has been expanding its hedge fund program after its directional strategies returned 17% in 2025. Texas ERS put over $1 billion to work across private equity, credit, real estate, and infrastructure in the fourth quarter of 2025, part of a strategy that has the pension allocating about 42% of assets to alternatives.
A platform built for AI infrastructure
The move follows a period of aggressive positioning in AI infrastructure for Apollo, which had approximately $1.03 trillion in assets under management as of March 31. The firm anchored the AI XPV Platform with Blackstone in June, with an initial $35 billion commitment to finance Broadcom’s custom AI chips for compute buildouts through 2028. Apollo partner Jamshid Ehsani, who led that transaction, called AI compute an emerging asset class marked by contracted cash flows and intensifying demand.
“At Apollo and Athene, we help meet the capital needs of companies and economies, while enabling people to retire with confidence,” said Apollo CEO Marc Rowan. “Austin lets us build the next generation of Apollo and Athene, including challenger models for parts of our own business, with the talent, technology and business environment already in place. That’s why we chose Austin and Texas.”