Why We're Excited to Lead the Scaleup Europe Fund

A few moments ago, we received the news that EQT has been selected to lead the Scaleup Europe Fund, a new initiative launched by the European Commission to bridge Europe's scaleup funding gap.

We’re incredibly excited, proud and grateful – and want to thank the European Commission and the fellow Founding Investors for putting their trust in us. This is a big moment for Europe.

When we started EQT Ventures a decade ago, we often said that our main competitor was not another fund, but the belief that founders had to go to Silicon Valley to succeed. Since then, Europe has built a thriving startup ecosystem. We have world-class founders, researchers, engineers, scientists, and breakthrough technologies. Many of the most important companies of the next decade are being built here in Europe.

What has often been missing is enough growth capital and ecosystem support to help these companies scale globally while keeping their roots in Europe. The ambition behind the Scaleup Europe Fund is to help change that.

Backing ambitious startups

Targeting €5bn ($5.8bn) in commitments, the fund will back ambitious European technology companies across areas like AI, robotics, semiconductors, energy, biotech, space and advanced industrial systems. EQT will make a significant commitment of its own capital to the Fund.

But this is about more than capital. It’s about helping strengthen the broader European technology and life sciences ecosystem by connecting founders with long-term capital, industrial partnerships, talent, infrastructure and global networks. Most importantly, it’s about raising ambition and helping more European companies become global category leaders.

This will require collaboration across founders, investors, corporates, policymakers, universities and institutions throughout Europe, and we see this as a long-term effort and shared mission.

Over the coming months, our team will spend significant time on the ground across Europe meeting founders, researchers, operators, investors and ecosystem leaders to better understand the strengths of each region and explore how we can help accelerate the next generation of European scaleups together.

Finally, a huge thank you to everyone across the EQT platform who contributed to this effort. This was a true team effort across Ventures, Growth, Infrastructure, Life Sciences, business development and many functional teams across the firm.

Alongside the European Commission, the group of founding investors in the Fund include Novo Holdings, EIFO (Export and Investment Fund of Denmark), CriteriaCaixa, Santander/Mouro Capital, Fondazione Compagnia San Paolo / Intesa Sanpaolo / Fondazione Cariplo, APG Asset Management (acting on behalf of Dutch pension fund ABP) and Allianz.