Inside Alts: EQT's Salata says AI infrastructure buildout has years to run

Added: 2026-06-10

[00:00:00]The largest alternative assets firm outside the US is making a big new push in America. The firm known as EQT is undeterred by the crowded and competitive North American market. Chair Jean Salada is not giving up on Europe though, having recently been selected to manage a fund to foster innovation in the region. We sat down with Salada after he was named [music] chair of the $300 billion firm.

[00:00:26]This is Inside Alts.

[00:00:31]>> Jean, thank you so much for joining us for Inside Alts. It's really a an opportune time to talk with you because you just assumed the position of global chair for EQT.

[00:00:42]Maybe just to level set, I'm just curious what your biggest strategic goals are in this new role.

[00:00:48]>> Thank you, Leslie, for having me today.

[00:00:49]It's great to meet you. Great to be here in New York.

[00:00:51]um the role of taking following in the footsteps of Connie Johnson, the founder of EQT. It's a huge privilege actually, but it's also a huge responsibility to continue to be kind of a steward for the business that um Connie founded over 30 years ago. Uh is also backed by the Wallenberg family, which has a multigenerational outlook on business ownership. So, we take a really long-term perspective on building kind of enduring value as an institution. uh we have um been through a few leadership changes already at EQT. So we've sort of moved beyond the founder stage of the company and want to really build a business that's going to last multigenerational kind of business outlook. When we think about the alternative markets industry or the the private markets industry, um it's just such a great industry to be in. there's so much long-term growth opportunities and for us it's trying to figure out where we offer something different, something unique that um where we feel we have an edge or we can offer our clients something that's interesting.

[00:01:47]So, we've chosen to really focus our business around active ownership strategies, equity strategies. Um we're not in private credit. Uh we're active in private equity, we're active in infrastructure, we're active in real estate. We've just announced that we're going to be moving into secondaries with the acquisition of Caller Capital. And so I would say that our overall objective as a firm is to really grow um to grow our business, to continue to grow our market share and grow our business in in the private markets industry and to continue to diversify our business and continue to broaden the sources of revenue that we generate as a firm. Um but you know at the top of all of this, the number one priority for us is to continue to deliver exceptional returns for our clients. If we don't do that, we we don't have a business. So that's priority number one.

[00:02:31]>> For a US audience who may be unfamiliar, EQT is the largest private markets investor outside of the US, but you are looking to invest more in the US as well. I read that you have $250 billion target investing through private capital, infrastructure, real estate over the next 5 years.

[00:02:51]>> Isn't this a crowded space? I mean, what is what is the appeal of of really making a big push in the US? Well, first of all, as you say, not many people know who we are, and I think that's something that we want to educate people on and continue to to improve that. Um, we are um we are the largest private market firm in the world outside of North America that's headquartered outside of North America. Um, I do think that we have a slightly different vantage point on the industry because twothirds of what we do, 65% or more of what we invest in is outside the US. So, we're very strong in Europe and we're very strong in Asia. Uh but we also have a growing business in the US and we're actually very bullish on the US. Uh we have all of our business lines are active here. Uh we have a very active infrastructure business here for example in the AI infrastructure space which is a super dynamic indust part of the industry to be in. Um we have edge connects which owns data centers. We own over 90 data centers most of which are in the United States. Um that business has grown by 20fold in the last seven years since we've owned it.

[00:03:53]>> 20fold.

[00:03:54]>> 20fold. Yeah. Um it's a fantastic investment for us. Uh it's also a business that's not just about data. We have the comput and the data centers but it's also a full solutions uh business where we also offer the power. So we have energy assets and we also have digital infrastructure connectivity around that. So our infrastructure business is kind of multifaceted. It's not just data centers, it's also energy and connectivity and digital connectivity and we kind of wrap that around solutions for clients that we work with. the hyperscaler clients for example that we work with in providing them the overall package and that's a big growth business for us here in the US uh we have a bit a growing private equity business here in the US we invest in healthcare we invest in the technology sectors those are our two big areas of focus we also have a growing ventures business now where we EQT ventures um by the way I should mention that you know we just announced yesterday that EQT was selected to run the scale up Europe fund by the European Commission it's a huge honor for us to have won that act. That that mandate's a $5 billion mandate to manage what will be the first fund in Europe to sponsor kind of the growth of European innovation and technology companies from the early stage through to the scaleup stage. There's a lot of innovation, we can talk about that later, but there's a lot of innovation happening in Europe that just isn't getting the funding. But there's an equal amount of opportunity in Europe, we think, as there is in the United States for early stage investing.

[00:05:17]But the point of that was to say that the technology franchise that we have is also very strong globally. And we think there's an opportunity for us to extend that into the US particularly for companies and we meet a lot of the companies for example in Silicon Valley.

[00:05:29]I was just in Silicon Valley a month ago meeting a lot of the heads of the big tech companies there. They're quite interested in what we bring to the table which is connectivity to Europe for example for them. They have a lot of investors from the US that are deep and strong here. But when it comes to saying, you know, how do we get their technology platform or their AI solution that they may have into the hands of more private equity owned businesses in Europe, we're a logical partner to team up with. And I think when you say, you know, is it a crowded market? Yes, it's absolutely a very deep market here, very crowded market. But we think we have a slightly different perspective, a different angle on what we bring to the table, which is that kind of global connectivity, that global outlook >> and that full downstream, you know, data centers connectivity. You said that's grown 20fold. Mhm.

[00:06:13]>> How are you thinking about investing further in that space? Do you feel like it it is, you know, some have said it's maybe a bit of a bubble. Do you feel like there's still more room to run from here?

[00:06:22]>> We're at pretty I believe we're at the very early stages of the investment that needs to happen to build the compute that's necessary to drive the AI transformation in the world. Uh that's not to say that when you have big step changes like we have are experiencing right now in technology, that's not to say that there won't be speculative excess in parts of the market. We've seen that in the past. I've lived through the internet bubble in the year 2000 as an investor. It was a very painful experience to experience that the rise and fall and but out of that, you know, you you you developed a lot of great companies that came out of that.

[00:06:53]That's where Amazon came from. That's where Google came from, you know, post the bubble bursting. So, I think there's, you know, I don't think we're at the moment in a bubble um like that at all because the, you know, the underlying uh businesses that we're seeing, most of them are generating a lot of revenue. Uh so there's there's real demand for their services. This is not speculative kind of eyeballs or speculative you know investment in businesses that may or may not deliver um a consumer uh a product that's that's required by consumers or by businesses.

[00:07:25]You're starting that you see real demand for what these companies are producing and delivering and the compute that's required in terms of the energy and the the infrastructure that's required to support them. It's just enormous. Um and so there's still a a real constraint.

[00:07:38]the the the the bottleneck is still around the capital that's required to build them, the actual construction of them, the supplies, the components that are required to build it out. There's many years to run we believe on that and and see how this plays out. It's likely that there'll be some innovation or some sort of twists and turns along the way that change the economics for uh for these businesses and that could cause things to have a little bit of a hiccup, but generally speaking, we're still very positive on the outlook here for AI infrastructure. So are you comfortable with you know your current exposure or do you plan to invest more?

[00:08:09]>> We're investing more. We're investing more. We have uh we have an AI infrastructure fund that's dedicated to the strategy. Um we're definitely investing more in energy assets. Uh we announced the take private of of a large energy company here in the US um called AES. Uh it's one of the largest energy companies and that's a new investment that we've just announced. Um we are looking to build out more in terms of the digital infrastructure, the power grid, the battery storage. Um you know, we're active across all aspects of AI infrastructure. In addition to that, our private equity strategies and our venture strategies are also investing in companies that are more AI native or that are using AI technology to transform the services and the products that they offer.

[00:08:50]>> How do you think about, you know, there's been some push back in the US on the data center, what it's meant for energy prices, what it's meant for the grid. um is that something that you come across as you're looking to invest in these assets and how do you think about you know selection and and where you see kind of the the the best places to put capital to work.

[00:09:13]>> Yeah, I think the constraint really is around power and around um the grid more so than um it is the actual data centers themselves. although that's another aspect of the constraint and I think the there's been such a lack of investment in the US infra energy infrastructure base for decades that that's going to take some time to catch up. I think there's a lot that can be done to optimize what exists today and to use it in a smarter way in a more efficient way. Um the concerns around the cost of energy to consumers and the cost of energy to society it's a real issue.

[00:09:47]It's a political issue, social issue, and it's something that policy makers are going to need to address. It's something that we're also focused on.

[00:09:54]Um, and I think the way that we try to approach it is, you know, we look at a lot of renewable energy investment opportunities. How can we create new power assets that are more green energy, renewable energy that um is going to be maybe off the grid or behind the grid that doesn't put the same pressure on the grid as it would if you're doing the traditional energy infrastructure assets. uh but it's a complex issue and I think it's going to continue to be something that needs to be a lot of dialogue around with policy makers with communities with all stakeholders to make sure that we arrive at the best solution. Ultimately though the the the the productivity gains and the the power of the compute that will be generated from AI should benefit everyone in society is is I think the the positive view to take. Um, and if that happens, then I think that, you know, you'll see higher economic growth rates. You'll see over time, um, everyone benefiting from the short-term pain that we're experiencing right now with some of these constraints.

[00:10:50]>> So, you're not too worried about, you know, job replacement. I know that, um, you're among the the private equity firms that are partnering with LLMs to help, you know, deploy the the technology into portfolio companies.

[00:11:02]you're not too worried about job replacement or or things of that nature as you help your portfolio companies pivot toward the AI future.

[00:11:10]>> That's a very big question that we need to figure out the right solution for that. Uh I I I would say that the you know initially what we're seeing is not huge wholesale job replacement. It's more augmentation of people's skills and productivity.

[00:11:25]um there is some at you know certain pockets where immediately there's a an opportunity to to replace workers with AI but more often than not what you're seeing is that the technology should make a worker much more productive like a superpower give you a superpower to do even more that much more um I think what it is doing and what I hope it ends up doing is it makes people's jobs a lot more interesting so it eliminates a lot of the the drudgery and the work done at you know at the sort of repetitive um analytical level that uh that can be automated or a lot of that can be enhanced and it can lift up the the the job description and the roles of what people do to higher level more cognitive level that uh you know makes the job a lot more interesting and ultimately leads to better paying jobs and more productive jobs. Let's home in on what you're doing in Europe. As you mentioned, you were recently selected as the investment advisor and fund manager for Scale Up, the Scale Up Europe fund, which is aimed at really bringing more of that venturebacked mindset to European technology, European innovation, uh, to be more on par with what you see in the US. I'm curious, what have been the historic hindrances?

[00:12:35]I know there was that big draggy report, right? um for for Europe technological competitiveness and what do you see as the ultimate goal in having a more technologically savvy Europe?

[00:12:48]>> Well, there's no shortage of innovation in Europe. None. I mean, it's on par with anything we see anywhere else in the world. There is um there's no shortage I would say or there's less of a shortage of early stage venture capital to allow these companies to get started. So [snorts] you see lots of great innovation and and early stage venture capital backed activity around Europe where there's a gap and this is what we're trying to address with this new fund is once companies reach a certain size particularly if they're being very successful a lot of them tend to pick up and go where the money is which is in the US and so that's where they find the big backers for the hundreds of millions of dollars of subsequent rounds and ultimately the IPO markets and you know and the talent follows that that's something that I think um is an opportunity. It's a gap and it's an opportunity for for Europe and for European investors. And so we have uh the backing of the European Commission, but we also have the backing of a number of very long-term investors in Europe.

[00:13:44]some of the big pension funds, the big families who see an opportunity for this homegrown innovation to stay in Europe and to develop in Europe um and to really become um kind of the the champions for these whether it's quantum whether it's AI life sciences um you know there's great examples of life sciences innovation that's been happening in Europe you look at co vaccines and and things like that that are stemming from different types of innovation different research different universities different entrepreneurs activity and as a as a as a as humanity, as a planet, we should be able to benefit from having more people participating in innovation rather than having it overly concentrated in just one subsection or one sample size of human cognitive research. Um, and I think the idea is to spread it around more and to really provide the resources for it to blossom everywhere. Uh, that's that's the idea. Um I think Europe um has also lacked the kind of the unified market approach to financial markets which would be beneficial. There's a lot of talk moving in that direction. I think it will happen but it will take more time.

[00:14:53]>> Um there's issues around you know how do you incentivize early stage founders with stock options and that sort of thing which there's a lot more work that needs to be done there. But I think this mandate that um that the European Commission has has awarded to uh to to EQT shows just how serious the EU is about tackling this problem and I think this is a great first step.

[00:15:12]>> And how much just given the backdrop of what this technology is. Um you know you've got kind of an oligopoly as it pertains to LLMs and AI with the US and and China right now. There's quantum computing again US and China. How important is it for Europe to have, you know, a horse in this race? Um, just whether it's for national security purposes, economic purposes, um, cyber security purposes.

[00:15:42]>> I think you're right. I think that's what's happening generally around the world is that, you know, there's there there are these silos that are developing in light of the need for national security. uh whether it's energy security or in the in the field of energy or in technology for technology security in defense you're seeing moves for most you many regions of the world to become more self-reliant on their defense um for their defense needs particularly in Europe and so I think this is this is kind of the world that we're living in and you it will it will shape um investment flows uh it means that there's a lot more demand for capital as a result of that because there's probably a bit more duplication than there would have been otherwise uh and and there are you know you talk about LLMs there are LLMs in Europe actually that are that are developing uh and and there's some really interesting innovation happening there so I think you will see domestic champions in China in the United States and in Europe >> um I'm curious there's been so much going on geopolitically and as a global investor how are you navigating the various fractures where whether it's the Iran war or US and China or the increasingly strained relationship by some measures between the US and Europe. Has it impacted your investing or your fundraising or your deal making at all?

[00:16:59]>> Uh overall, we try to stay fairly neutral in the way we think about the world and the way we think about investing. Um, you know, having the Swedish listing and the Nordic heritage that we have, Sweden has always been trying to be kind of having a very global perspective on the world, being very international in its outlook and, you know, as the Wallers like to say, making friends, not enemies. Uh, it's better to make friends than enemies. So, we we we try to have friends all over the world and and try to um be a good partner, a good long-term partner. uh I think generally if you look at most of our investments we are investing domestically a lot of our investments are domestically oriented service companies we don't have a lot of businesses that are sort of in the trade flows um if you look at our Asia strategy for example um you know we we've invested in healthcare companies in India for example we own hospitals in India it's one of our biggest investments that we have in the region doing very well that's a very domestically oriented investment that's not really subject to geopolitical complexity Um we have a business in Japan for example that is uh one of the largest domestic elevator manufacturers in Japan called Fujitech Elevator that is a business that's really driven by domestic real estate demand and they have they have some businesses overseas as well but a lot of it tends to be domestically focused and and with manufacturing for domestic markets. Um, so we try to stay focused on domestic opportunities in this environment to avoid the geopolitical complexity. And I'd say that generally investors have been kind of looking to diversify more globally rather than less in this complex world that we're in. Um what we've seen in our most recent fundraisings is particularly as it pertains to the US um you know the US has been doing really well. The stock market is doing well. The economy is doing well but investors are starting to feel very very concentrated and um and very kind of overly correlated to very small number of names and themes in in US equity markets or in US financial markets. And so the idea of becoming more globally diversified to build resilience in institutional portfolios and even I would say in private wealth portfolios. We're seeing a trend there in people wanting to get a little bit broader exposure and I think that's generally benefiting our business more than anything else. You're also expanding in the realm of private wealth and that's a space where we've seen some volatility this year in terms of redemptions and um you know what it means for retail investors to be invested in places that are semi-liquid and and better understanding what that means. I'm just curious, you've you've been in the space for 5 years. You have about seven evergreen strategies >> um evergreen funds. Ho how do you think about just the the volatility we've seen this year? Has it impacted that space for you and and your appetite to do more of these?

[00:19:56]>> Uh the short answer is no. Uh and one of the reasons for that is that we don't have a a private credit business at EQ.

[00:20:02]We only invest in equity strategies. So that I think has helped navigate this uh what's happening. We announced publicly that we had a record quarter in Q1 in terms of inflows into our private wealth products. We had a $1.2 billion of inflows. Um that's the most we've ever had. Uh if you look at our evergreen strategies, uh I think a couple things are interesting there to why we think there's there's investor interest.

[00:20:26]Number one, um 65% of our investments as I mentioned earlier are outside the United States. So people there is there does seem to be genuine interest in getting more broad exposure globally to what's happening both in the US but also outside the US. Number two, our private um evergreen private equity evergreen products and our infrastructure evergreen products are designed in a way that they get everything exactly the same deals that our institutional investors get. There's no separate allocation strategy or separate investment team or separate pool of capital that's invested in some deals by the private wealth product that are not invested in by our institutional funds.

[00:21:05]So if you're a sovereign wealth fund, if you're one of the biggest pension fund in the United States, or if you're an individual investor, you're getting exactly the same deals that everybody else gets, which I think is an important feature of our product that is not consider not every firm operates that way. Um, and then the other big thing for EQT, and this has really been driving the growth of our business overall is that we had a record year for exits last year in 2025. So it's been a very tough market for exits. You know, the narrative in private equity is that there's a lot of unrealized capital, a lot of people not getting distributions, and so it's a tough fundraising market.

[00:21:39]You know, we've been able to buck that trend. We had a record year for distributions last year. We had $40 billion in distributions in 2025, and we were also the number one investor uh private equity firm in terms of uh equity capital markets IPO activity. Uh we had $15 billion of sellowns to the public markets last year. and this kind of liquidity profile uh which is by the way it's directly tied to the diversification point the two are it's not a coincidence that you know that we're more globally diversified and we had more distributions in 2025 and so when people see that they think well my portfolio is like 95% US it's tied to these seven names in the stock market um maybe I should put a few percent into this global evergreen open-ended structure that will give me more exposure to Japan give more exposure It's happening in Europe. You know, our biggest exit last year at EQT was a company called Galerma. It's listed in Switzerland. It's um it's the largest medical aesthetics business, Botox and that sort of product. Doing very well.

[00:22:42]Um and we, you know, we've in total generated something like $26 billion of distributions back to our investors from that single investment over the last three years of multiple sellowns, including about 8 billion in our final sellown that we did last year. uh again in a very tough liquidity environment we're able to sell a product a business that is you know very well positioned and very uncorrelated to everything else that's going on in the world. So back to the diversification point and you know why why having this in your portfolio um is you why there's still inflows into the asset class and into our product I think this is has a lot lot to do with it is the distribution profile the access to the global portfolio and the kind of the fact that it's equally allocated together with institutional investors. I'm also curious. You mentioned you're not in private credit and I know that you sold your credit credit business in 2020 and you recently said in a TV interview that you are keeping an open mind about credit.

[00:23:39]>> What would change your mind on this? I mean obviously it feels like a good place to be right now not in credit just given all the headlines and the noise and everything. Um >> is this something that you think ultimately changes for EQT especially as you seek to expand? I'm glad you've been doing your homework and sort of picking through all my previous quotes.

[00:23:57][laughter] >> That's my job.

[00:23:59]>> That's very good. Very good. Uh yes, I did say that. Um I think that what I meant by that is that uh well first of all you know there was a period of time where we really regretted selling the business to be honest because we saw that the asset class was growing and we're saying you know why why did we do that and then uh but you know that was a minority view I would say within the team and then there was the other view which was we're actually that's not our strength uh we are uh good equity investors we know how to do value creation we know how to do um business building and and and building equity value. That's kind of our DNA. And to suddenly become a lender and to do origination at scale with, you know, going from having a portfolio of 15 companies in a fund like you do in a private equity fund to having hundreds of companies or thousands of companies is a very different business and that's not what we're good at and it's not what we know how to do. So that was sort of the thinking behind that. I I actually agree with that. I think that that's um in the long run that's the right mindset to have uh for us at least as EQ. Now as the industry's devol evolved and you look at the way the markets are developing and you you look at where what's happening with savers with retirement accounts with the capital needs of the economy the real we've been talking a lot about the amount of money that's required for infrastructure investing you know these things are changing all the time and so what's the role of the banking sector what's the role of the private lending markets to create this long-term value I think we need to keep an open mind because I don't think we can be too dogmatic about it over the long done. I think what's evident to me though is that to be active to be successful in private credit now you you need to have scale.

[00:25:39]So it would it needs to be done at scale and what we had before actually was not was subscale. Um and I think it needs to be done um you know with a team and a construct of people that really live and breathe that business of of lending as opposed to the equity business that we know today. So it would have to be quite a separate setup in a in a completely dedicated large-scale business. Um but it's not really something that's top of mind for us right now. Um the one thing that is related to this which is part of our business now that we part of the caller business actually once we close on that deal is caller has a credit secondaries business and and that's very interesting because that is really stepping into a dislocation in the market today uh where because of what's happening with redemptions and so on you have more force sellers and fewer buyers for some of these bulk assets uh and we think there could be some excess return potential there some alpha opportunities there and I think that's where the credit secondaries business um might be for us a first window first look at what's happening in in in the credit markets >> secondaries has been so popular are you worried that that alpha generation is getting competed away just given the broader appetite for secondaries in this environment or do you still feel like there's >> no I I really I think we're at the very early stages of this in fact I think if there's going to be there's there's going to be some sort of a convergence between primary and secondary uh funds Uh if you think about if you step back and look at what's happening you know between if you look at say what's happened in in the public markets um public markets have mainly become secondary markets you know if you wanted to go and buy shares of Apple computer today you would buy them from somebody else that's a secondary transaction >> if you bought the IPO of Apple that was 30 40 years ago whatever it was [laughter] >> me too me too uh that uh you know that that's something that's come and gone uh but now the market's more mature and it's essentially become a secondary market. The private equity industry by analogy started off as being a primary market. There were no privately owned companies in the world uh or they were only owned by families and so financial investors didn't have access to that.

[00:27:51]How do you get access to that? You have to raise a fund. You have to create a deal team that goes out, finds the companies, creates the deals and provides investors, institutional investors with access to these private assets. We're now in a place where the industry's been around for whatever it is 40 years and maybe 50 years and you have now um $3.8 trillion or $4 trillion of any of unrealized private investments which is the headline that you often read about the problems with the private equity industry. all these unrealized assets. That is a pool of assets that represents invested money into private companies that could now be a a way for investors to get exposure to the asset class by investing in those very same companies through a secondary transaction which is essentially the way the industry is going is you're going to have more and more solutions whether it's a secondary where's a fund of funds whether it's GPE secondaries whether it's an evergreen structure an open-ended structure that enables you to access this pool of private assets that are out there. Some of which are owned by private equity funds, some of which are owned by other um you know other types of corporate ownership or individual ownership. But essentially gives you ass access to the asset class in a way that um enables you to treat it the same way you would treat your exposure in in primary uh funds uh primary funds investing. you almost start to look at it as a way of dialing up or dialing down your exposure through the secondary market uh as opposed to only having to subscribe to a fund, invest in that fund over four or five years, get your money back over the next four or five years. That's sort of the traditional way of doing it. And over time, I think secondaries will play a much much bigger role in the way not just individuals get exposure but also institutions get exposure to this asset class.

[00:29:32]>> Convergence of public and private markets.

[00:29:34]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:29:35]>> Uh Jean, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate the conversation.

[00:29:40]>> Likewise. Thank you, Leslie.