Ekaterina Zaharieva, European commissioner for start-ups, research and innovation. © European Union, 2024
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.
