Norway wealth fund posts record US$184 billion profit in first half of 2026

[ARENDAL, Norway] Norway’s US$2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, posted a record profit of 1.75 trillion Norwegian crowns (US$184.3 billion) for the first half of the year, lifted by technology stocks, it said on Wednesday (Aug 12).

Investing the Norwegian state’s revenues from oil and gas production, the fund owns on average 1.5 per cent of all listed companies globally, making it the world’s largest single investor.

“The result is driven by good returns in the equity market, particularly from Asian technology stocks,” CEO Nicolai Tangen said in a statement accompanying the half-year results. The fund’s first-half return beat a previous record of 1.5 trillion crowns set in the first six months of 2023, and corresponded roughly in size to the full-year nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of a nation such as Uzbekistan, a country of around 39 million people, a Reuters comparison showed.

Still, the fund’s management has repeatedly warned that future wars and economic depression could wipe out much of its holdings. Tangen on Wednesday said the top 10 companies in its portfolio now represent 20 per cent of the fund’s value, with most of those firms in the tech industry, raising the concentration risk associated with its index-based investment strategy. “It’s chips, chips, chips, chips, chips ... we’ve never seen such concentration before,” Tangen said.

Any change to this strategy would have to come from Norway’s parliament, a process that normally takes years. The fund late on Tuesday announced for the first time that it held a 0.05 per cent stake in Elon Musk’s SpaceX worth US$1.22 billion as of June 30, in an updated list of its holdings.

That stake was modest when compared with its other tech holdings.

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Asean Intelligence

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It held a 1.28 per cent stake worth US$62 billion in Nvidia, a 1.24 per cent stake worth US$52 billion in Apple, a 1.17 per cent stake worth US$50 billion in Alphabet, a 1.27 per cent stake worth US$35 billion in Microsoft and a 1.7 per cent stake worth US$34 billion in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, fund data showed.

Overall the fund is invested in around 7,100 companies globally. It also invests in bonds, property and renewable projects. SpaceX shares rallied sharply in the wake of its record-breaking IPO in late June, then pulled back sharply as investors questioned whether a lofty valuation of 77 times expected revenue could be justified. REUTERS