Investing in the Age of AI: EQT’s Value Creation Day

EQT started investing in artificial intelligence more than a decade ago, recognizing its potential to spur productivity, accelerate innovation and unlock growth. Today, we’re helping our portfolio companies capture the AI opportunities and navigate the disruption.

At EQT’s Value Creation Day in London last month, participants heard from several of our partners, as well as a selection of CEOs from portfolio companies including Anticimex, CFC, Straive and EdgeConneX. In case you missed it, here are a few highlights:

Per Franzén, CEO and Managing Partner

AI-driven super-cycle

“AI is the most significant investment theme of our generation. Today we’re in an AI-driven capex super-cycle based on a massive buildout of data centers, power capabilities, and connectivity.”

AI-centric CEOs

“Having AI-centric CEOs and management teams is a top priority. Truly integrating AI into business processes can lead to lasting competitive advantages. For the PE industry, AI is likely to result in a higher dispersion of outcomes across managers going forward.”

Bert Janssens, Co-Head of Private Capital EU & North America

Leaning in

“We are in the risk-taking business. Leaning in is crucial. Avoiding the trend might be the safe course, but we’ve decided to go with the trend, invest in our capabilities, and partner with the right people.”

“There will be winners and losers. I believe the key will be to remain diversified because it is a very fast-moving market. We want to use this technology not only to invest with the AI trend but also to help transform our companies.”

No free returns

“There is a major technological shift underway. But it is also an extremely difficult time. It's probably as hard as I've seen. We've got wars going on. We've got geopolitical disruption. We've got macro uncertainty. And add to that technological disruption. What does that mean? It means there are no free returns. Every basis point will have to be earned.”

Carolina Brochado, Head of EQT Growth US and EQT Ventures

Faster growth

“Companies are growing faster than ever before. It’s a reflection of the fact that there’s such huge demand to adopt these technologies.”

Forward-deployed engineers

“A lot of companies want to use AI but they have no idea how, so what a lot of these businesses are having to do is actually send forward-deployed engineers to figure out what's the best use case and then also help handle change management."

Masoud Homayoun, Head of EQT Infrastructure

The infrastructure opportunity

“Rising energy demand, the retirement of legacy assets, and the energy transition will likely equate to a significant opportunity in the next four or five years. Energy security is an added accelerator. Then you have the AI transition. AI infrastructure is a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity across data centers, connectivity, as well as power, which could be the limiting factor in terms of growth.”

Hari Gopalakrishnan, Partner, Co-Head of Private Capital Asia

Four key factors in Asia

“One is intrinsically higher growth. About two-thirds of global growth today comes from Asia. Two, Asia is underfunded. Of the total private equity capital allocated, less than 10 percent goes to Asia. Third, we are buying assets from families and founders where we can apply our value-creation playbook. Finally, Asia can be a source of diversification benefits. Last year Hong Kong was the number one IPO market. Even when markets are shut in North America and Europe, we can still get liquidity out of Asia. AI can potentially turbocharge all four.”