The EU has chosen Swedish investment giant EQT to run a new €5 billion fund aimed at keeping Europe’s most promising deep-tech companies on home soil.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) has chosen Stockholm-headquarter EQT as fund manager for the Scaleup Europe Fund, following a competitive selection process that generated expressions of interest from December 2025 to February 2026.
The fund is the largest of its kind ever established in Europe and will direct growth capital to potential companies in a variety of strategic areas, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, clean energy, aerospace, biotech and medical innovation.
The fund’s main goal is to close the persistent late-stage funding gap that has long pushed European scaleups to raise capital elsewhere and, in many cases, move abroad entirely.
The new multibillion-euro ‘Scaleup Europe Fund’ was first announced in October 2025, and is designed to build on the ‘Choose Europe to Start and Scale’ strategy launched earlier last year.
With an initial goal of 5 billion euros, the Commission eventually hopes to raise 25 billion euros for the expansion fund, said a spokesman at the time.
Sweden’s EQT is one of the most established investment companies in Europe, and was chosen by the EIC board, it said, on the basis of its history in equity growth, its capacity to find capital, and its commitment to building a dedicated investment team within the EU. The company brings a broad European presence and a strong institutional infrastructure that EIC says is well suited to the scale and ambition of the mandate.
The fund has already brought together a strong group of founding investors alongside the European Commission, including Novo Holdings, CriteriaCaixa, Santander/Mouro Capital, Dutch pension fund ABP (owned by APG), Allianz, Denmark’s EIFO, and a consortium of Italian foundations including Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Intesa Sanpaolo, Intesa San Paolo.
The breadth of that group, which includes pension funds, banks, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds across the continent, suggests broad confidence in the fund’s structure and potential returns.
EQT and EIC will now finalize legal agreements covering the fund’s structure, governance, and investment framework. The founding investor commitments are subject to internal due diligence and board approvals accordingly, with initial closings expected within weeks.
The fund and its new manager will be officially launched at the EIC Conference on 3 June 2026, with the first investment scheduled for autumn 2026.
“Europe’s competitiveness depends on expanding our innovation, in our strategic sectors, through our capital,” said Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation. “This is proof of what Europe can achieve when we pool our resources.”
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