The EU has chosen Swedish investment giant EQT to run a new €5bn fund aimed at keeping Europe’s most promising deep tech companies on home soil.

The European Innovation Council (EIC) has selected Stockholm-headquartered EQT as fund manager for the Scale-up Europe Fund, following a competitive selection process that drew expressions of interest from December 2025 to February 2026.

The fund is the largest of its kind ever launched in Europe and will direct growth capital at high-potential companies across a range of strategic sectors, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, clean energy, space technology, biotech and medical innovation.

The core goal of the fund is to close a persistent late-stage financing gap that has long pushed European scale-ups to raise capital elsewhere and, in many cases, to relocate abroad altogether.

The new multibillion-euro fund was initially announced back 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 €5bn, the Commission eventually hopes to raise €25bn for the scale-up fund, a spokesperson said at the time.

Sweden’s EQT is one of Europe’s most established global investment firms, and was chosen by the EIC board, it said, on the basis of its track record in growth equity, fundraising capability and commitment to housing a dedicated investment team within the EU.

The firm brings a broad, pan-European presence and a strong institutional infrastructure that the EIC said was well-suited to the scale and ambition of the mandate.

The fund has already assembled a strong group of founding investors alongside the European Commission, including Novo Holdings, CriteriaCaixa, Santander/Mouro Capital, Dutch pension fund ABP (managed by APG), Allianz, Denmark’s EIFO, and a consortium of Italian foundations including Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Intesa Sanpaolo and Fondazione Cariplo.

The breadth of that group, spanning pension funds, banks, foundations and sovereign-backed institutions from across the continent, suggests wider confidence in the fund’s structure and return potential.

EQT and the EIC will now finalise the legal agreements covering the fund’s structure, governance and investment framework. Founding investor commitments are moving through internal due diligence and board approvals in parallel, with first closing expected within weeks.

The fund and its new manager will be formally presented at the EIC Summit on 3 June, with first investments planned for autumn 2026.

“Europe’s competitiveness hinges on scaling our own innovation, in our own strategic sectors, with our own capital,” said Ekaterina Zaharieva, Europe’s commissioner for start-ups, research and innovation. “This is proof of what Europe can achieve when we align our resources.”

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