The European Union is evolving its industrial doctrine. After having mainly sought to stimulate innovation via subsidies, research programs and start-up support mechanisms, the challenge is now much more ambitious, namely to keep on European soil companies capable of structuring future global technological infrastructures. The EU has therefore entrusted the management of the future Scaleup Europe Fund to the EQT investment fund. Behind this 5 billion euro vehicle dedicated to European deeptech scaleups lies a deeper transformation: European technological sovereignty now passes through private capital.
For years, Europe has had a structural paradox: an immense volume of institutional savings but a limited capacity to direct this capital towards risky technological assets. Pension funds, insurers and large European financial institutions have historically favored prudent allocations, leaving major technology cycles to be financed mainly by American capital.
Because this is precisely where Europe remains structurally fragile, the European ecosystem now produces more technological startups and deeptech research than ten years ago, but it still struggles to finance heavy industrial phases. Capital needs have changed in scale. Artificial intelligence models, compute infrastructures, energy capacities or quantum technologies today require investments that are closer to industrial infrastructure than traditional venture capital.
Brussels could have favored a strongly institutional vehicle or a quasi-public structure, but preferred to study the EP option by studying the proposals made by several market players including Atomico and EQT, shortlisted in the final selection. Europe now considers that the financing of technological sovereignty must be managed according to market logic and not only via administrative tools. Of the 2.5 billion euros already committed to the fund, only 1 billion comes directly from the EIC. The rest mainly comes from European private institutional investors such as Novo Holdings, CriteriaCaixa, Santander / Mouro Capital, APG and the Wallenberg family.
The Scaleup Europe Fund attempts precisely to correct this historical weakness by creating a platform capable of connecting European patient capital and strategic technologies, and targets sectors considered strategic in global technological competition: artificial intelligence, quantum, dual technologies, energy, space, biotech or critical industrial infrastructures. The aim is to prevent the most promising European startups from seeking their growth funding in the United States or the Middle East at the critical time of scaling up.
The choice of EQT also allows Brussels to send another signal: that of a desire to quickly attract more private capital. A new fundraising phase is already planned for the second half of 2026 in order to open the vehicle to other European institutional investors.
But this approach also raises several tensions. As deeptech technologies become subjects of sovereignty, the boundaries between industrial policy, private interests and financial logic become more blurred. The questions that have arisen around Lars Frølund, a former Commission advisor who became an external advisor at EQT, already illustrate the emerging sensitivities around these new public-private hybrid vehicles.
Because behind the question of financing lies another question: is Europe ready to accept the logic of concentration of capital necessary to create true technological giants?
