EQT Foundation
Breakthrough Finance
Our grants in support of breakthrough finance are designed to fund bold ideas that aim to improve capital flows for impact-driven entrepreneurs. Many of the challenges facing the scientists and entrepreneurs we back are structural, and requires a more holistic approach than one-time funding and tailored support. The strategic initiatives we back under our breakthrough finance program seek to build market infrastructure and new financing vehicles that help close critical funding gaps and remove friction for new innovation to reach the market.
We are looking to back change agents and organizations with entrepreneurial spirit and deep knowledge about the challenges they are trying to solve.
Our grantmaking within this program focuses on initiatives that challenge the status quo, build market infrastructure, develop innovative financing models, and remove friction in scaling high-impact solutions. By supporting these foundational shifts, we aim to accelerate growth and unlock greater opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators driving systemic change.
Each year, we select a handful of moonshot ideas that align with our themes and provide not only funding but also access to the EQT platform, advisors, and portfolio network to accelerate real-world testing and adoption. Our support extends beyond capital. By leveraging EQT’s global ecosystem, we connect grantees with relevant expertise, industry insights, and potential partners to help them refine and scale their solutions.
Whether it's supporting the design stage of a new financing vehicle, community of funders, or grant mechanism, we are looking for projects where EQT's expertise and network could provide additionally and increase the likelihood of success. With a belief that everything can be improved, everywhere, at all times, our breakthrough finance grants allows us to make bets on visionaries that dare to think differently and challenge the status quo of financial markets. Through this program, we are not just funding ideas, we are helping to shape the infrastructure that will enable the next generation of break-through solutions to thrive.
Case Studies
A founder-first playbook powering the scale‑up of climate tech through sector‑specific scaling frameworks.
The Climate Brick is an open-source, community-driven “missing manual for climate tech.” Born from a collaboration between investors and industry across Europe, it offers seven sector‑specific frameworks, called “bricks”, that serve as strategic roadmaps for scaling climate technologies, highlighting key milestones, financing pathways, and scaling success factors.
Reimagining finance for impact, building inclusive, co‑created capital systems that work for the many, not the few.
The Innovative Finance Initiative (IFI) is a bold five-year effort to reshape how capital flows by crafting and testing inclusive, impact-centered funding models. Hosted by the platform The Impact, IFI is spearheaded by innovative finance expert Aunnie Patton Power. The initiative brings together foundations, family offices, and ecosystem builders to create participatory financial tools, from steward-ownership structures to impact-linked financing, that better serve communities and the planet.
Shaping the next generation of impact investors through learning, research, and real-world experience.
The CASE i3 Initiative at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business is a global leader in impact investing education and research. Serving students, entrepreneurs, investors, and practitioners, it has crafted a comprehensive ecosystem combining curriculum, consulting, and knowledge infrastructure to grow talent and rigor in investing for both financial and social return.
An open innovation platform advancing systemic investing practices, aiming to build a new infrastructure for regional, multi-stakeholder investments.
The TransCap Initiative (also known as TransCap) is a non‑profit think‑and‑do‑tank operating at the crucial intersection of systems change, sustainability, and finance. It runs an open innovation platform dedicated to building the emerging field of systemic investing, a new investment logic designed to transform human and natural systems through strategically orchestrated capital deployment.
Pioneering a secure, AI-powered data platform to revolutionize pediatric cancer research globally.
Barncancerfonden, Sweden’s leading funder of childhood cancer research, launched Project BrainChild to tackle fragmentation in clinical, genomic, and imaging data across institutions. The project aims to create a unified, interoperable, and secure data infrastructure to accelerate diagnosis, treatment development, and AI-driven insights that could fundamentally improve outcomes and care pathways in pediatric oncology.