On Monday, Swedish thematic-focused private equity and real assets investor EQT announced that it is launching a new early-stage investment strategy, EQT Growth.
EQT Growth will apply the firm’s traditional thematic investment focus, partnering with founders and management teams of market-leading companies to make growth investments in technology, technology-enabled and scalable businesses.
The initiative will place Sweden’s EQT among a tiny clutch of global private market firms with investment strategies that address the needs of companies throughout the lifecycle.
Motherbrain. We want one.
According to the company, EQT Growth is an outgrowth of several successful growth transactions from EQT’s Mid Market, Private Equity and Venture investment strategies (such as Epidemic Sound, Freepik, Sportradar, Banking Circle, AutoStore, and Wolt). EQT AB will use its own balance sheet to support investments aligned with the new EQT Growth strategy.
Motherbrain, EQT’s proprietary in-house artificial intelligence (AI) system, will play a crucial role for EQT Growth, helping to identify trends and source potential investment opportunities.
In terms of specific targets, EQT Growth will explore thematic growth opportunities between venture capital and private equity that align with EQT’s key investment areas such as B2B tech, healthcare tech, impact tech and consumer/prosumer tech.
Human hires
EQT has also scored a key (human) executive recruit to lead the new strategy. Microsoft Corporate Vice President and deals guru Marc Brown will join the company as Partner and Head of EQT Growth. During his time with Microsoft, Brown oversaw all of the company’s M&A and strategic investment activities, leading more than 185 acquisitions, including those of LinkedIn, GitHub and Microsoft, and 80 strategic equity investments, including those of Flipkart, Databricks and Graphcore.
Also joining EQT Growth is former SoftBank and Atomico VC partner Carolina Brochardo, who joined EQT as Partner earlier this year. Tenured EQT Partners Victor Englesson, Dominik Stein, Johan Svanström and Henrik Landgren (official Motherbrain Partner), will round out the rest of the leadership team.
Announcing the launch of the growth strategy on Monday, EQT CEO Christian Sinding said, ”Building this strong team is a true milestone in EQT’s desire to become the preferred partner to the best high-growth market leaders across Europe and beyond. Adding a growth-focused strategy fits us perfectly as it complements EQT’s ’ecosystem’. In fact, EQT is now one of the very few private markets firms in the world with investment strategies that cover and support companies from the startup phase all the way until mature, leading businesses. This makes us a smarter investor and an even better partner to management teams. Finally, EQT Growth is a great example of how we can use EQT AB’s balance sheet to accelerate the development of new initiatives where we can generate strong sustainable returns for EQT’s investors.”
“The Growth strategy will apply EQT’s thematic focus and seek future champions, and will be a critical next step in the development of EQT Private Capital, and further manifesting our future-proofing and positive impact approach,” added Per Franzén, Partner and co-head of EQT Private Equity.
Där allt började
EQT is a differentiated global investment organization with a 25-year consistent performance track record across multiple geographies, sectors, and strategies. EQT started in 1994 when Investor AB, a Swedish industrial holding company and “de facto conglomerate” belonging to the prominent Wallenberg family, partnered with North American middle-market private equity group AEA Investors, Swedish banking group SEB, and individual investors to create a boutique private equity advisory firm.
Today, EQT operates fully separately from Investor AB and has raised more than EUR 62 billion in funds, currently managing EUR 40 billion in assets across 20 active funds and three business segments: Private Capital, Real Assets and Credit.