Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, during a news conference in Oslo, Norway, on Jan. 29, 2025.
Naina Helén Jåma | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Norway’s $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund reported a record half-year profit of more than $184 billion on Wednesday, as a rally in Asian technology stocks helped the fund return 9.4%.
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) manages the fund, which was set up in the 1990s to invest revenues from the country’s oil and gas industry. The fund — currently valued at around $2.34 trillion — is an investor in more than 7,000 companies across more than 50 countries and has stakes in around 1.5% of the world’s publicly listed stocks.
Its profit for the first six months of the year came in at more than 1.75 trillion Norwegian kroner, or around $184.9 billion.
“The result is driven by good returns in the equity market, particularly from Asian technology stocks,” Nicolai Tangen, CEO of NBIM, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Equities make up more than two-thirds of the wider portfolio, with NBIM also investing in fixed income, real estate and renewable energy infrastructure.
Around 40% of NBIM’s portfolio is comprised of U.S. equities, with its most valuable holdings being shares of Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft.
SpaceX investment
Equities make up more than two-thirds of the wider portfolio, with NBIM also investing in fixed income, real estate and renewable energy infrastructure.
Around 40% of NBIM’s portfolio is comprised of U.S. equities, with its most valuable holdings being shares of Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft.
The fund’s first-half report came as its managers disclosed a 0.05% stake in SpaceX, valued at just over $1.2 billion. The SpaceX stake is dwarfed by some of its other holdings, including a 1.3% stake in Nvidia worth $61.8 billion and a 1.2% ownership of Apple valued at $52.7 as of June 30.
The investment in SpaceX makes NBIM a major investor in both publicly traded companies led by Elon Musk.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund also holds a 1% stake in Tesla that was reported to be worth around $15.7 by the end of the first half.
However, Musk has had a fractious relationship with NBIM.
SpaceX shares have proved volatile since their June IPO
In 2024, NBIM voted against Musk’s historic $56 billion pay package from Tesla. It was later reported that Musk declined an invitation from Tangen to a private dinner and a conference run by NBIM in Oslo.
“When I ask you for a favor, which I very rarely do, and you decline, then you should not ask me for one until you’ve done something above nothing to make amends,” Musk reportedly wrote in a text message to Tangen, disclosed under Norway’s freedom of information law. “Friends are as friends do.”
NBIM later voted against Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in late 2025.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk- consistent with our views on executive compensation,” NBIM said in a statement at the time.
“We will continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics,” the fund’s managers added.
Asked at a news conference on Wednesday how the fund’s SpaceX weighting has evolved, Deputy CEO Trond Grande said NBIM does not comment on individual stock positions.
“We were roughly index rate in the first half, and that’s been the case over the summer as well,” he said.
SpaceX shares soared on their debut in June, but have since faced volatility with hundreds of billions of dollars wiped from its market cap by the end of July after an intial post-IPO rally. On Monday, the stock closed above its IPO price for the first time in weeks.
“We own 7,000 companies, some go up, some go down — every day. And not only every day, many times a day,” Tangen said when pressed on that volatility.
Market warnings
During Wednesday’s press conference, Tangen emphasized the role the semiconductor sector had played in the fund’s first-half growth.
“Chips, chips, chips, chips,” he said, while standing before a chart demonstrating the best-performing stocks in the portfolio, which included Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC, ASML, Intel and Nvidia.
However, the fund — like the global stock market — also saw volatility, with its equity investments falling 2.6% in the first quarter of the year as markets were gripped by AI jitters and concerns about the U.S.-Iran war. In the second quarter, however, NBIM’s equity holdings rallied 15.98%, leading to a first-half return of 12.95%.
In a speech at Norway’s Arendalsuka political conference on Tuesday, Tangen labeled the sovereign wealth fund a “piggy bank for the whole of Norway” — but he warned that the country “must be prepared for the value to go up and down.”
“Can the fund disappear? The answer to that question is ‘yes’ — and the worst part is that in the world we live in today, it is fairly likely,” he said.
“There is no country in history that has managed to hold on to a large financial fortune over time. Fortunes are always lost in the end.”
