(BFM Stock Exchange) – The Norwegian sovereign fund recorded a return of 13% last year, supported by the strong increase in American technological values.

The stratospheric performance of “seven magnificent”, the GAFAM (Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft) to which Nvidia and Tesla have done good to the Norwegian fund. The most important sovereign fund in the world thus signed a return of 13% (excluding exchange effects and government subscribing) in 2024.

Fueled since 1996 by income from the country’s oil deposits (the largest in Western Europe), the fund has seen the value of its assets increase by 2,511 billion crowns (about 214 billion euros per Last year), by excluding here again the positive impact of the exchange effects (1,072 billion crowns) and the norwegian state subscriptions (402 billion crowns). “That is to say the equivalent of 40% of the GDP of Norway!”, Says Alexandre Baradez, chief of market analysis at IG France.

These record gains generated by the fund contributed to bring its total balance sheet to 19,742 billion crowns, the equivalent of 1,682 billion euros at the end of December.

Lucrative tech investments

By asset class, equity investments, which represent 71.4% of the portfolio, won 18%, carried by the American giants of technology due to the demand sustained for solutions based on generative artificial intelligence ( Ia).

Moreover, the seven magnificent accompanied by the specialist in semiconductors Broadcom were all part of the nine strongest participations of the Fund in value, the ninth being the Taiwanese founder TSMC, which also benefited from the boom linked to the boom AI.

“The fund obtained very good returns in 2024, thanks to a very solid stock market. American technological values, in particular, behaved very well,” said Nicolai Tangen, Director General of Norges Bank Investment Management, the fund sovereign.

The tech thus strongly contributed to the record results of the fund in 2024, allowing it to pocket 1,170 billion crowns in 2024, just under 100 billion euros.

Chance of the calendar, Norges Bank unveiled its annual report on Wednesday. Two days after a sales movement based on the American technological values ​​linked to the prowess of the young Chinese push Deepseek in the AI ​​market.

This start-up unveiled a model of language of AI rivaling with those of large American groups and which was built, a priori with much lower costs last week. This created a shock wave on the markets, the composite Nasdaq having dropped by around 3% on Monday, while the manufacturers of Nvidia and Broadcom fleas fell by 16.97% and 17.4% respectively.

Biggest investor in the world

Nicolai Tangen commented on the Deepseek shock wave during a question and answer session believing that the emergence of models with lower costs will be positive for a democratization of artificial intelligence. The president of the sovereign fund also added that there had been no “major changes” in the portfolio of the fund from the storm caused by Deepseek on the American markets.

Arrested on the risk of concentration of technological values ​​in the fund, Nicolai Tangen replied that he was managed “by being a long-term investor”. “We must learn to live with a risk of higher concentration than in the past, and I do not think that there is much that we can do” more, he also abounded.

As usual, Norges Bank Investment Management repeated that such results could not be expected in the future. “It won’t last forever,” he said.

Bond investments (26.6% of assets) appreciated 1% throughout the year. Real estate investments (1.8% of assets), on the other hand, sold 1% over this same period and those, still very marginal (0.1% of the portfolio), in unlisted renewable energy projects have sold 10%. The fund generated an average annualized return of 6.34 % between 1998 and 2024.

The Norwegian sovereign fund is the biggest individual investor in the world. It holds participations in nearly 9,000 companies and on average 1.5% of the capital of all the planet’s listed groups, according to its website.