Norway’s $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund posted a record first-half profit of more than $184 billion on Wednesday, driven by a strong rally in Asian technology stocks that pushed its six-month return to 9.4%.
Norges Bank Investment Management, known as NBIM, reported a profit of more than 1.75 trillion Norwegian kroner for the first six months of 2026, bringing the fund’s total valuation to approximately $2.34 trillion. Established in the 1990s to invest revenues from Norway’s oil and gas sector, it holds stakes in more than 7,000 companies across over 50 countries and owns around 1.5% of all publicly listed stocks globally. Equities account for more than two-thirds of the portfolio, with NBIM also investing in fixed income, real estate and renewable energy infrastructure.
The fund used Wednesday’s half-year disclosure to reveal a 0.05% stake in SpaceX, valued at just over $1.2 billion. That holding looks modest against some of NBIM’s larger positions: its 1.3% stake in Nvidia is valued at $61.8 billion and its 1.2% interest in Apple at $52.7 billion as of 30 June. US equities make up roughly 40% of the overall portfolio, with Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft among the most valuable holdings. NBIM also holds a 1% stake in Tesla, reported to be worth around $15.7 billion at the close of the first half.
The SpaceX disclosure adds a notable dimension given the fund’s complicated history with Elon Musk. NBIM voted against his $56 billion Tesla pay package in 2024 and later opposed a further trillion-dollar compensation award at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in late 2025, citing concerns about total size, dilution and key-person risk. Musk, it later emerged, had declined a dinner invitation from NBIM chief executive Nicolai Tangen and sent him a pointed text message, disclosed under Norway’s freedom-of-information law, suggesting that goodwill needed to be earned before any favour would be considered in return.
At Wednesday’s press conference, when deputy chief executive Trond Grande was asked how the fund’s SpaceX weighting had evolved, he said NBIM does not comment on individual positions, adding only that the fund had been roughly index-weighted in the stock through the first half and into the summer. Tangen, meanwhile, flagged the semiconductor sector as a central performance driver, highlighting contributions from Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC, ASML, Intel and Nvidia. Equity investments dipped 2.6% in the first quarter amid AI uncertainty and US-Iran conflict concerns, before recovering sharply with a 15.98% gain in the second quarter.
Tangen had also spoken at Norway’s Arendalsuka political conference on Tuesday, describing the fund as a piggy bank for the whole country while cautioning that its value could, in an extreme scenario, disappear entirely. He noted that no country in history had managed to preserve a large financial fortune indefinitely. A sobering observation to attach to what is, for now, a record-breaking result.
