We first built Aladdin as a risk management enabler, empowering investors to better understand their portfolios through technology. Today, Aladdin is much more than that. Our clients are leveraging Aladdin as a whole enterprise operating system, connecting multiple asset classes, data, technology partners and a single platform. Aladdin’s integrated offering continues to resonate with the majority of our sales this quarter, spanning multiple Aladdin products. We are in the late-stage conversation with several large potential Aladdin clients and we look forward to executing on more opportunities ahead to be bringing the benefits of Aladdin to new clients and by expanding relationships with our existing clients. From the early days of developing Aladdin to now managing nearly $10.5 trillion across our platform, our ambition has always been to help investors benefit from the growth of the capital markets and achieve financial futures that they seek.
More than half of the assets we manage are related to retirement, making this an outcome central to many of our client conversations. BlackRock has been at the forefront of innovation and advocacy for retirement solutions for years. In fact, we pioneered the first target date fund called LifePath back in 1993, when we introduced the concept. It was a revolutionary, eliminating some of the guesswork for retirement savings by automatically adjusting their investment mix over the time frame. Fast forward 30 years, Target Date funds have become the most common default investment option in defined contribution plans in the United States, where we’re entrusted to manage the retirement assets of 35 million Americans. We continue to evolve LifePath to help deliver the retirement outcome participants need.
That has meant introducing LifePath options in new countries and in new wrappers such as LifePath, Target Date ETFs we launched last year. Our LifePath Target Date franchise now has nearly $470 billion in assets and has risen over $115 billion in assets just over the last five years. In addition to helping people save for retirement, we also work to expand the LifePath solution to help people spend throughout their increasingly longer retirement. Society focuses a tremendous amount on helping people live longer and healthier lives, but spend just a fraction of that time and effort on helping them afford those extra wonderful years. The shift from pension to defined contribution models have put the large ask the large burden on individual savers.
They have to first build up the retirement estate, which in and itself is a formidable challenge. Then even as they have this sizable savings at retirement, there’s not much guidance about how to spend and or not — and how not to overspend these savings. We’ve been working for years to address this de-accumulation challenge and we believe this will help increase hope in America. In 2020, we announced the LifePath Paycheck, the next generation of Target Date solutions. It will include an option to purchase a lifetime income stream from insurers selected by BlackRock and is expected to go live towards the end of the month. We are partnering on implementing LifePath Paycheck right now with 14 planned sponsors, representing over $25 billion in Target Date AUM and now have 0.5 million participants.
We’ll pair the flexibility of a 401(k) investment with a potential for a predictable paycheck life income stream similar to a pension. I believe it will be in one day, the most used investment strategy in defined contribution plans. This pioneering structure can help address global gaps in funding retirement security, improve the quality of life and retirement for millions of Americans and bring back hope for those who were retiring. It’s been four years since the start of the pandemic and the subsequent geopolitical upheavals. Leaders of countries, leaders of companies need to create hope for the future for all of their stakeholders. That’s certainly what we’re doing at BlackRock. I’ve spoken before about the fear we see today, some is stoked by increasingly political polarization in the world.
Our industry and BlackRock have been a subject of political dialogue mostly in the United States. We recognize some of this with being the industry leader. We have done a better job now of telling our story so that people can make decisions based on facts, not on lies and not on misinformation or politicization by others. Unfortunately, there are still others out there who put short-term politics, who continuously lie about these issues. They are putting those issues above the long-term fiduciary responsibilities. As a fiduciary, politics should never outweigh performance. I do believe that with the vast majority of our clients, our long-term fiduciary approach and performance are resonating. We heard it in our dialogue with them, and we see it in our flows and I know all of you as shareholders see it in our flows.
Over the last past five years, clients have entrusted BlackRock with an aggregate of $1.9 trillion of total net inflows, $1 trillion over the last three years and nearly $300 billion last year. It has been in the United States where client led inflows in every one of these areas. It is true also in the first quarter of this year. This is in all is in the environment where the industry has experienced flat or negative flows, BlackRock saw inflows. Our sustained growth, our accelerating momentum are made possible by the trust of our clients and shareholders and the dedication of all the BlackRock people. Across our firm, we’re delivering BlackRock to meet all our clients’ individual needs, we’re helping each and every client unlock their new opportunities and the power of BlackRock’s integrated platform has enabled us to drive better outcomes for each and every client and providing them a differentiated growth for them, which then entails providing differentiating growth for you, our shareholders.
I believe at this time, our momentum has never been stronger. The opportunity we have in front of us has never been stronger. And I look forward at BlackRock to be delivering on a significant broad base of opportunities across the world, across our platform, across all of our products and delivering the responsible fiduciary responsibilities that we provide to each and every client. Operator, let’s open it up for questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We’ll go first to Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America.
