{"id":140353,"date":"2026-08-04T16:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T16:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/140353\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T16:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T16:22:10","slug":"brussels-hands-its-e5bn-scale-up-fund-to-stockholm-private-equity-giant-eqt-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/140353\/","title":{"rendered":"Brussels hands its \u20ac5bn scale-up fund to Stockholm private equity giant EQT \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has completed the legal steps needed to launch the Scaleup Europe Fund<\/a>, a \u20ac5bn scheme designed to keep Europe\u2019s most promising technology firms from moving to the United States or China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Management of the fund will be handled by EQT, a Stockholm-based private equity group.<\/p>\n

Capital will be focused on artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, biotechnology and clean tech, which the commission calls \u201cstrategic deep tech\u201d, and the first investments are expected within weeks.<\/p>\n

But investment decisions will be made independently and \u201con market terms\u201d, according to information shared by the commission on Tuesday 4 August).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fund, first floated by commission president Ursula von der Leyen in her 2025 State of the Union address, is part of the European Innovation Council Fund.<\/p>\n

EQT was selected<\/a> after a competitive tender process earlier this year. Other candidates included London-based venture capital firm Atomico and French investment company Eurazeo.<\/p>\n

Backers of the new fund include pension funds, state-linked investment arms and family offices, including Denmark\u2019s export and investment fund EIFO, APG (on behalf of Dutch pension fund ABP) and insurer Allianz.<\/p>\n

Europe already produces a steady stream of startups, but at the scaling-up stage many leave for the US which has larger venture funds. The commission\u2019s answer is to let a commercially run fund compete for that stage of financing.<\/p>\n

EQT was founded in Stockholm in 1994 and grew out of Investor AB, the holding company of Sweden\u2019s Wallenberg family.<\/p>\n

The Wallenbergs are the country’s most influential industrial dynasty, with historic ties to telecoms group Ericsson, industrial equipment maker Atlas Copco and bank SEB.<\/p>\n

The commission previously said<\/a> it chose EQT because of its technology investing record, its ability to raise additional private capital accross Europe, and its shared ambition to “scale deep-tech innovation in Europe”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The firm, however, is best known for buying established, profitable companies. It is one of the world’s largest private equity firms today. It raised $134.4bn [\u20ac116,7bn] in private equity capital over the past five years, second only to New York’s KKR and ahead of Blackstone.<\/p>\n

And its core business remains buyouts of mature, cash-generating companies rather than venture and growth investing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Its portfolio includes companies such as private schools operator Nord Anglia Education, chemicals distributor Azelis, mortgage bank Enity, data-centre operator EdgeConneX and refrigeration firm Beijer Ref.\u00a0<\/p>\n

EQT also runs a smaller growth and venture arm, EQT Ventures, with roughly \u20ac2bn under management. Notable investments include autonomous trucking firm Einride and micromobility operator Voi.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Deep tech?<\/p>\n

The firm’s published list<\/a> of current holdings runs into the hundreds.<\/p>\n

A handful fall within the “deep-tech” categories the new fund is meant to target, including quantum computing firm SEEQC, fusion energy developers Marvel Fusion and EX-Fusion, electric aircraft maker Heart Aerospace, and battery manufacturer Verkor.<\/p>\n

A larger share of the portfolio is in biotech and pharma, much of which came from specialist investor LSP which EQT acquired in 2022. <\/p>\n

Business software makes up the largest part of the technological portfolio, including content management platform Sitecore, payments processor Mollie and second-hand fashion marketplace Vinted.<\/p>\n

Several more recent additions are branded as AI, such as Harvey (legal AI) and Parloa (customer-service AI agents), though both built their services on existing AI models rather than developing frontier AI capabilities themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whether EQT\u2019s track record matches the technical ambitions of the EU\u2019s scale-up fund will become clearer in the coming weeks, as the first investment decisions are announced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission has completed the legal steps needed to launch the Scaleup Europe Fund, a \u20ac5bn scheme…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[104],"tags":[5754,211,210,11982,11980,11981],"class_list":["post-140353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-identifier25","tag-namegreen-economy","tag-termcodegreen-economy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117038163591234511","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}