EQT Ventures is the venture capital arm of EQT Group, the Stockholm-based alternative asset manager listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. The fund launched in 2016, initially closing at approximately €566 million, making it one of the largest debut VC funds raised in Europe at the time. A second fund of roughly €660 million followed in 2019, and a third fund of around €1.1 billion closed in 2022 – bringing cumulative capital raised across vehicles to over €2.3 billion. EQT Ventures operates as a multi-stage fund, writing checks from seed through growth rounds, with a stated focus on technology companies in Europe and North America.
The fund is closely associated with "Motherbrain," a proprietary AI-powered deal-sourcing platform the team built in-house. Motherbrain ingests signals from public data sources – job postings, patent filings, web traffic, GitHub activity – to surface early-stage companies before they actively fundraise. EQT Ventures has spoken publicly about Motherbrain as a core competitive differentiator, though the extent to which it drives final investment decisions versus human judgment remains a matter of debate in the industry. The fund operates from offices in Stockholm, London, Berlin, New York and San Francisco.
Notable investments
- Klarna – EQT Ventures was an early backer of the Swedish buy-now-pay-later giant. Klarna reached a $45.6 billion valuation in 2021 before a sharp markdown to roughly $6.7 billion in 2022. The company subsequently filed for a US IPO in 2024, offering a partial recovery on paper.
- Epidemic Sound – Stockholm-based music licensing platform for creators, valued at over $1.4 billion as of its last disclosed round.
- Peakon – Employee engagement SaaS acquired by Workday in 2021 for approximately $700 million, one of the fund's cleaner exits.
- Einride – Swedish autonomous electric freight company that has raised several hundred million dollars and operates commercial routes in Sweden and the US.
- Wayflyer – Dublin-based revenue-based financing platform for e-commerce merchants, raised over $300 million in equity and debt.
- InfoSum – UK data clean-room infrastructure company backed alongside major media groups.
Within the blockchain and digital assets space, EQT Ventures has made a small number of infrastructure and fintech-adjacent investments. Public information on specific crypto portfolio names is limited relative to the fund's broader tech portfolio – the six blockchain-related positions tracked in industry databases represent a selective, opportunistic approach rather than a dedicated crypto thesis.
Team
The fund was co-founded by Hjalmar Winbladh, a Swedish serial entrepreneur who previously founded Rebtel and was an early investor in several Nordic consumer tech companies. Lars Jörnow and Ted Persson are among the senior partners, both with backgrounds spanning Nordic tech entrepreneurship and early-stage investing. Alastair Mitchell joined as a partner contributing enterprise software expertise; he previously co-founded Huddle (acquired) and held roles at board level across UK SaaS companies. The full partner roster has evolved across fund vintages; public information on current headcount and individual portfolio responsibilities is not always kept up to date by the firm.
Recent activity
Between 2024 and early 2026, EQT Ventures continued backing European B2B software and infrastructure companies. The broader EQT Group saw its own share price under pressure through 2023-2024 as the fundraising environment for alternative assets tightened, though the venture arm maintained deployment activity. Klarna's IPO process drew significant attention to the portfolio given the dramatic valuation cycle it experienced. No major new fund closes have been publicly announced beyond Fund III as of the available record.
EQT Ventures occupies a specific niche: a large-brand VC with institutional backing and a data-driven sourcing story, operating in a European market where fewer mega-funds compete at seed stage. Its connection to the broader EQT platform – which manages over €230 billion in assets across buyout, infrastructure and real assets – gives it balance sheet credibility and potential co-investment pathways that pure-play VCs cannot match. Whether that institutional weight translates into consistent venture-stage returns at scale remains the central open question for the fund as it approaches the end of its Fund III deployment window.