Norway wealth fund assessing whether to invest in SpaceX

By Gwladys Fouche and Jesus Calero

OSLO, April 23 (Reuters) – Norway’s $2.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, is assessing whether to invest in SpaceX, the fund’s deputy CEO told Reuters on Thursday.

The rocket and satellite company controlled by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is expected to launch a $1.75 trillion initial public offering, possibly the largest ever, this summer.

Asked whether the fund had been approached to be part of SpaceX as an investor, Trond Grande said in an interview: “We have dialogue with companies, right? So, we also have dialogue with SpaceX.”

When asked whether the fund was assessing whether this could be interesting for the fund, Grande said: “That is what we are doing.”

He declined to give further details.

APRIL GAINS OFFSET Q1 LOSSES

Grande was speaking after the fund reported on Thursday a first-quarter loss of 636 billion crowns ($68.4 billion) as the war in the Middle East weighed on global stocks.

The war that began with the U.S. and Israel launching coordinated strikes against Iran in late February left the S&P 500 stock index with its deepest quarterly decline since 2022.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which holds around half of its funds in the United States, posted a negative return of 1.9% for the January-March period.

A rise in markets in April had already offset the losses in the first quarter, due to the announcement of a ceasefire, Grande said, adding the war was not being viewed as an opportunity for the fund to buy stocks at a cheaper price.

“We’re not doing any big changes to the portfolio or how we invest just on this one,” he said. “It’s very unpredictable.”

The fund funnels the revenue from Norway’s oil and gas production into stocks, bonds, property and renewable projects abroad.

PRIVATE CREDIT WOES “A WATCH POINT”

Fears about artificial intelligence disrupting software businesses have filtered through to the private credit and private equity firms that lent to, and bought them, during many years of low interest rates.

Grande said the fund was monitoring developments in that sector in case it causes the wider financial markets to crash.

“It’s always a worrying sign when people who want to redeem some of their units are not able to redeem them in full,” said Grande.

“That gives you a signal that there might be something here. So it’s definitely a watch point: to what extent it could become systemic.”

($1 = 9.2922 Norwegian crowns)

(Reporting by Jesus Calero and Gwladys Fouche, editing by Himani Sarkar and Keith Weir)