Norway’s $1.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund saw a huge boost from the A.I.-driven tech surge in the first six months of this year, putting the investment titan back on track after one of its worst years ever.
The fund—the world’s biggest single investor in the stock market—announced on Wednesday that it had achieved a 10% return for the first half of the year, amounting to 1.5 billion Norwegian Kroner ($143 billion).
In comparison, the S&P 500 logged a return of around 16% in the first half of 2023.
The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, which manages the wealth derived from Norway’s oil and gas resources, gained almost 14% from its stock holdings in the six months to June 30, with its fixed income assets returning just over 2%.
The fund’s return was stunted, however, by a 4.6% loss on unlisted real estate investments and a 6.5% loss on unlisted renewable energy investments.
By the end of the first half of the year, the fund was valued at 15.3 billion Kroner ($1.4 trillion), with 71% of that value coming from equities.
According to news agency Reuters, the fund, which is almost three times the size of Norway’s economy, owns around 1.5% of the world’s stocks.
Between 1998 and June 2023, the fund generated an annualized return of just under 6%.
However, last year—which saw stocks take their worst battering since the financial crisis—Norway’s wealth fund suffered a 14% loss, the second-worst return in its history after a 23% loss at the height of the 2008 crash.
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The fund cited a strong equity market for its boosted returns for the first six months of the year, noting that the A.I. gold rush had driven a boom in tech stocks—which make up a sizeable proportion of its portfolio.
Apple was the fund’s biggest equity holding by June 30, while Microsoft, Google parent firm Alphabet, Amazon and Nvidia—all of which have seen their market caps boosted by their focus on generative A.I.—rounded out the fund’s top five stock investments. It also held large stakes in Facebook parent Meta, Elon Musk’s Tesla, and U.S. banking giant JPMorgan.
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Meanwhile, its biggest fixed-income holdings were U.S. Treasuries, followed by Japanese, German and U.K. government bonds.
“The stock market has been very strong in the first half of the year, following a weak year in 2022,” Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management—which manages the fund—said in a statement on Wednesday. “Technology stocks especially have seen significant growth, largely driven by the increased demand for new solutions in artificial intelligence.”
Tech stocks returned 38.6% for the fund in the first half, with consumer discretionary stocks coming in as the fund’s second-strongest holdings with a return of more than 20%.
In a separate statement on A.I., the fund said it believed the responsible development and use of the technology will be “important for well-functioning markets.”
“[It] has the potential to affect the financial return on our investments over time,” it said. “We support the development of a comprehensive and cohesive regulatory framework for A.I. that facilitates safe innovation and mitigation of adverse impacts.”
