World’s largest sovereign wealth fund reports $354 billion annual profit on tech rally

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund — the largest of its kind in the world — posted full-year profit of 2.5 trillion kroner ($354.5 billion) on Wednesday, fuelled by a tech rally.

The Government Pension Global Fund was valued at 19.7 trillion kroner at the end of 2024, Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) said in an earnings report. The fund’s return on investment came in at 13 per cent for the year, 45 basis points lower than the return on its benchmark index.

“The fund achieved very good returns in 2024, as a result of a very strong stock market. The American technology stocks in particular performed very well”, Norges Bank Investment Management chief executive Nicolai Tangen said in a statement.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, NBIM deputy chief executive Trond Grande described a “very, very strong year for equities” as the biggest driver of the fund’s return in 2024.

More specifically, he noted returns had been driven by certain sectors, particularly as a result of a boom in tech stocks.

“Tech [has been] really strong, driven by AI, and also financials due to interest rates being higher for longer,” he said.

NBIM manages the fund on behalf of the Norwegian population. Set up in the 1990s to invest excess revenues from Norway’s oil and gas industry, the fund is currently an investor in more than 8,000 companies across 63 countries.

The fund is a shareholder in global companies including tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon, with 70 per cent of its benchmark index comprised of equities.

The sovereign wealth fund also invests in fixed income, including government and corporate bonds, as well as in real estate and renewable energy infrastructure.

DeepSeek impact

US tech stocks have been volatile this week, after Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released a free, open-source large language model that it said was quicker and cheaper to produce than those of its major rivals.

The developments sparked a tech sell-off on Wall Street, with AI darling stock Nvidia — in which the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund holds a 1.3 per cent stake — dropping almost 17 per cent on Monday.

Tangen touched on the emergence of DeepSeek during the Wednesday press conference.

“The fact that there are now cheaper language models available is positive, it’s positive for the democratisation of artificial intelligence,” he said. “So you should get more penetration of that technology around the world when the cost is lower, so that’s a general positive.”

Tangen admitted that he did not know whether the recent tech sell-off was a blip or would become a long-term trend.

“We have had a small underweight in the large technology companies, it’s not very large, but we have not made any major changes following Monday,” he said.

“I think [the DeepSeek development] came as a surprise to the whole world or you would not have seen those market reactions,” he said, noting that people he had spoken to had believed China was around two years behind the US on AI developments.