EU’s €5bn tech superfund officially open for business

After a year of speculation, legal wrangling and Brussels press releases, the European Commission's Scaleup Europe Fund is finally open for business. The Commission confirmed on Tuesday that the €5bn vehicle, managed by Swedish investment firm EQT, has cleared every remaining legal hurdle and is ready to start writing checks, with the first deals expected within weeks rather than months.

Ursula von der Leyen framed the moment as a turning point for European tech, saying the fund will let scaleups find what they need at home instead of chasing capital abroad to grow into world-leading companies. It's a big claim for a fund that, until now, has mostly existed as a subject of chatter about who might get the money.

Two names have already surfaced. Sifted reported the fund is in discussions to lead or co-lead a fresh round for French AI company Mistral, which is reportedly targeting €3bn in new capital. Separately, the fund has held talks with Franco-German spacetech firm The Exploration Company about a round Sifted understands could be around $350m, though EQT declined to comment on that one.

EQT has previously said it's sitting on a pipeline of more than 100 startups and typically plans to lead or co-lead investments in the €100m to €500m range, which gives a sense of the scale this fund is aiming for. The firm is also still working to raise the rest of the €5bn target, with existing backers including Novo Holdings, Denmark's EIFO, Santander/Mouro Capital, APG Asset Management on behalf of Dutch pension fund ABP, Wallenberg Investments and Allianz.

There's also a geopolitical subplot here. The UK has reportedly been in talks to invest through the British Business Bank, but the French government has pushed back on that idea, a reminder that even a fund built around European unity still runs into old national fault lines.