(Science|Business) Scaleup Europe Fund seeks manager ahead of first investments

For the original publication, please click here.

A manager for the Scaleup Europe Fund should be in place by the end of February, with the first investments due in the summer “at the latest,” according to Ekaterina Zaharieva, the European commissioner responsible for start-ups, research and innovation. 

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21, Zaharieva said that the fund was not just about supporting start-ups, but also aimed to stimulate Europe’s investment community. 

“[We have] two main objectives: keep the companies in Europe [and] help them to become global champions, and show that it’s profitable and good business [to invest in the European deep tech sector],” she said. “We believe that this fund will have a much broader effect than the companies we are going to invest in.”

Plans for the Scaleup Europe Fund were unveiled in October 2025 by the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and a group of private investors. The aim is to create a €5 billion fund to back promising start-ups with the large-scale, late-stage growth capital that they need to go global, filling a financing gap that pushes innovative companies, particularly in deep tech, to move out of Europe.

The Commission is contributing €1 billion to the fund, with the private sector expected to supply the rest. So far, 10 investors have committed to contribute, including Novo Holdings.

“We’re going to do a first close, probably this spring, at about €3 billion, and we haven’t really started an aggressive fundraise,” said Kasim Kutay, chief executive of Novo Holdings, during a forum panel session. “We do have to talk about a lot more capital, but I think this is a terrific start.”

A Commission official confirmed that the fund aimed to raise between €2.5 billion and €3 billion by the spring.

Novo Holdings, which manages the wealth and assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, has committed to a €500 million investment over the 10-year lifespan of the fund, Kutay said. “If we can make this work, I think it will encourage more public-private partnerships, but will also be a blueprint for how else we can deploy capital for the rest of Europe,” he added.

Money in, money out

The investors are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, of course. 

According to Marcus Wallenberg, chairman of Wallenberg Investments and several other Nordic investment firms, the returns could be around 20%. 

“There will be probably a mix of views on what the return should be depending on [whether] you come from the public or the private side,” he said on the same forum panel. Wallenberg Investments is likely to be a founding investor in the fund, but has yet to say how much it might contribute.

Wallenberg added that he wants the fund to be “a market-driven exercise” with a governance structure that supports the drive for more such funds to be created. “It’s important for the managing team to really show that they will have traction in getting some critical industries [involved],” he said.

In the meantime, the EU must tackle related obstacles. “I’m thinking about some of the regulations around our insurance companies, I’m talking about the lack of appetite of our banks to invest in a patient long-term way [. . .] I’m talking about very nascent markets like the securitisation one,” Kutay said.

If these are not addressed, “I do fear that the long-term, patient risk capital that exists in the US will never really take off in Europe,” he added. 

For Zaharieva, deploying more capital is tied in with completing the single market. “It’s easy to say, difficult to achieve, but I really believe that if we don’t achieve it now, in this geopolitical situation, we are never going to achieve it,” she said at Davos. 

She also signalled a higher long-term target for the fund. “Twenty billion euros is the ambition, but now we start with €2.5 billion.”

The search for the Scaleup Europe Fund manager has been entrusted to the European Innovation Council Fund. Its remit is to find a privately owned and market-based manager, that can both advise on investments and manage the fund’s portfolio. 

Zaharieva said that she had first thought of appointing two to three managers for the fund, but discussion with potential founding investors revealed a clear preference for a single manager. “It’s really key for this process to be transparent and fair,” she said, while adding that multiple managers might be reconsidered if the fund approaches the €20 billion mark.