EQT's Christian Sinding - "Why not" Europe and building the €1 trillion company

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s podcast takes us to Oslo, Norway, for a very special conversation with Christian Sinding, the former CEO of one of the industry’s leading alternative asset managers, EQT.

Christian’s hometown of Oslo provided an ideal setting to showcase both the Nordic heritage that represents EQT’s DNA and the global ambitions of the firm (and one of its portfolio companies, 1X) that is looking to fund Europe’s first €1T company.

Christian has been one of the leaders in the alternative asset management industry. He was most recently the CEO of EQT, where he steered the firm on an impressive growth path as a public company and helped scale the firm to almost €300B AUM.

He’s now focused on another ambitious project: the Scaleup Europe Fund, a fund that EQT is managing and has support from the European Commission to invest in Europe’s most promising technology companies.

With 1X Tech’s NEO humanoid robot joining us for part of the discussion, Christian and I had a fascinating conversation about the past, present, and future of alternative asset management and Europe’s technology ecosystem. Christian and I discussed:

The evolution of EQT and alternative asset management.What Europe needs in order to fund the future.How Europe can harmonize its capital markets infrastructure.What it will take to create the €1T company.What it means for companies to have global ambition.The what, why, and how behind EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund.Why EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund invested in ICEYE and Lovable.Why EQT invested in 1X.How Christian’s “why not” attitude can take Europe’s technology ecosystem to the next level.Come for the conversation with Christian, stay until the end to meet NEO.

Bio

Christian Sinding is an Institutional Partner at EQT with nearly 30 years of experience at the firm. He served as CEO and Managing Partner from 2019 to May 2025, during which EQT quadrupled in size, becoming the fourth-largest company listed on the Swedish stock exchange.

As CEO, Christian oversaw EQT’s public listing on Nasdaq Stockholm in 2019 and guided the firm’s development as a publicly listed organization, with a strong focus on governance, transparency and long-term, responsible ownership.

Prior to becoming CEO, Christian served as Head of EQT Equity from 2011, where he played a central role in building EQT’s core investment franchise and expanding the firm’s international footprint. Under his leadership, EQT scaled from a market value of ap