Welcome to EQT's half-year report, 2026. It's been a busy and successful first half for us. All in, fee-paying AUM at EQT grew 10%. We delivered total revenue growth of 5% and 4% of EBITDA growth versus last year, with significant fundraising activities underway driving growth into 2027. Before handing over to Per to kick things off, let me ask that we limit questions to two questions in today's Q&A to make sure everyone has sufficient time to answer questions. So with that, let's hand it over to you, Per, to kick things off.
Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everyone. In a challenging and uncertain environment during the first half, we delivered strong performance and made significant progress across the board. We took advantage of a volatile market environment to unlock attractive investments. We were able to leverage our differentiated sourcing capabilities to really create very attractive deal flow for investors. We substantially increased our investment pace compared to last year, and in total, we put 19 billion euros of capital to work and generated 9 billion euros of co-investments. At the same time, we stayed disciplined on exits, building really on the record year of exits that we had in 2025, when we achieved 40 billion euros of distributions, we sent back close to 17 billion euros to our clients during the first half. Across business lines, we launched a number of new strategies, and we currently have more than 20 active funds in the market. In private capital, we were selected for the scale-up Europe fund by the European Commission. This win is really a great testament of our market-leading position in Europe and the quality of our early-stage platform. In Asia, we raised the largest Asia-focused private equity fund ever, with BPA9 hitting the hard cap at $15.6 billion. For ECT11, we're off to a very good start. and we have so far secured commitments of half of the target fund size. In private capital, we have strong deal flow across strategies. In total, we put 5 billion euros of capital to work out of our funds, and we generated around 5 billion euros in co-investments. A significant part of that co-invest came from the 11 billion sterling take private of Intertech, Post-Incitec and Tacosil EQT10 is now approximately 85% invested. In EQT equity, we continue to see strong and attractive deal flow ahead, and we expect to activate EQT11 during the third quarter. The attractive near-term investment pipeline in EQT equity is also likely to support and drive further fundraising momentum for EQT11. Again, this is something that we've seen in prior flagship fundraisings, most recently in BPA9 and Infra6. Turning to our infrastructure business, momentum across our infrastructure platform is really exceptional. The investment volumes for the first half of 2026 are higher than the two previous calendar years combined. Value creation has picked up significantly. performance across funds is strong and the outlook remains favorable. Not least for the AI infrastructure strategy and all of the connected investments that we have across our infrastructure platform. Both the AI infrastructure and the active core infrastructure strategies are off to a very strong start. We launched the EQT Infra 7 fundraising with a 21 billion euro target fund size and the initial reception has been very positive and interest from clients is strong. In real estate, we also see excellent momentum. We closed the most recent Europe logistics fund at the 3.1 billion euro hard cap and we launched the U.S. Industrial Value Fund 7 targeting $6 billion. We're really optimistic about the potential in this part of our business and we'll come back to that shortly. Collar Capital remains on track for closing in the third quarter. Adding secondary capabilities to our platform will make us even better placed to be the most attractive counterparty in private markets for clients. It will also significantly strengthen our positioning in the insurance channel and in private wealth. Across our private wealth platform, we see strong momentum. And in the quarter, including color, our evergreen offerings reached a new milestone of 10 billion euros in NAV. Private wealth remains an important opportunity for us. We will approach this opportunity with a long-term and responsible mindset. and we continue to make the necessary investments into our client solutions capabilities, distribution partners, as well as our brand. An important initiative in this regard was the EKT and the European Quarter of our brand partnership in sports with the EKT Tennis Tour. Next slide, please. In May, we announced the decision by the European Commission to select EQT to manage the scale-up Europe Fund. The decision was taken following a highly competitive process and is really the ultimate validation of what we've built over the last 30 years. As the only European platform investing across ventures, growth, and life sciences, we are uniquely qualified for this mandate. The opportunity set is significant and very attractive. Over the last decade, an estimated 1.2 trillion in market value has left Europe. Europe really doesn't have a startup problem. It has a scale-up challenge. We estimate that there is more than 500 billion euros in scale-up funding until 2031. Today, 60% of growth stage funding of European companies comes from outside of Europe. With the Scale-Up Europe Fund, we want to really rally the entire European early stage ecosystem behind this opportunity. We want to leverage our scale, our operational toolbox, our global network to help European entrepreneurs and founders realize their full potential. We want them to go for gold and become global winners, just like ETT has become a European headquartered global winner in the private markets. The focus for the fund will be AI, robotics, semiconductors, energy, biotech, and advanced industrial systems. In one of these subsectors, we want to find and back Europe's first trillion euro company. The fund is off to a great start. Deal flow is above our expectations, and interest from investors is strong. We have more than 125 high-priority opportunities that we're currently pursuing, and we expect to announce several investments for this strategy already during the third quarter. We set the target fund size at 5 billion euros. we see client demand above this level, and we have not set the hard cap for the fund yet. Next slide, please. Second quarter, we officially launched the EQT AI Infrastructure Fund to offer investors direct exposure to the most compelling investment opportunity of our generation. The demand for AI compute is accelerating at a rapid pace, and we continue to see a huge supply-demand imbalance. industry estimates suggest that by 2030 four trillion dollars will be invested into data centers and energy infrastructure at EPT across our infrastructure platform we've invested in this team with high conviction for many years starting with our investment in edge connects in 2020 since then we've developed a differentiated strategy to connect our fiber energy and data center assets and our real estate platform to provide integrated solutions for data center clients around the world. As a result, EKT is uniquely positioned to be a central partner in this build-out. Through EdgeConnects we today operate more than 90 data centers globally across five continents in 26 countries. We've deployed 30 million miles of fiber network and our energy companies have a development pipeline exceeding 100 gigawatts. No other private markets firm can offer this type of integrated solutions to hyperscalers. The AI infrastructure fund provides a unique opportunity for private market investors to get exposure to this theme. And that is what we're seeing reflected in the significant value creation and fundraising momentum for this fund. In less than In three months, NAV increased from $2.4 billion to $9.4 billion. Next slide, please. Let me now turn to EQT real estate. It's been approximately five years since we acquired Exeter. During this time, the real estate market was really or has been out of favor and the fundraising environment has been challenging. In the key funds, EQT real estate delivered top quartile or better performance. And as a result, despite these challenging market conditions, we have doubled fee generating AUM from approximately 11 billion euros at the time of the acquisition to 22 billion euros today. We want to build on this performance and momentum and think that now is an interesting time to accelerate growth. We see signs of the real estate market gradually improving and activity levels picking up. We recently announced the launch of the fundraising for the flagship U.S. Industrial Value Fund 7, and the $6 billion target is a significant increase in fund size compared to Fund 6. The initial response from clients has been very positive. Looking ahead, we see an opportunity to expand into new thematic verticals beyond our current industrial and logistics focus. Living, multifamily, and data centers are near-term priorities and opportunities for us. Geographically, we're continuing to build our presence in the U.S. and Europe, and longer-term, APAC is also an opportunity. The new segment reporting reflects the strategic importance and the growth opportunity that we see going forward for this part of our business. Next slide, please. At EQT, we continue to generate the most attractive deal flow and the most attractive co-investments in the private markets. Our ability to generate co-investments is a real differentiator for us and is the result of the deal sourcing machine that we've built over the last decades. Combining a strong local presence in our target geographies with a global sector-based thematic investment approach allows us to unlock deals and to engage with investors in a more long-term strategic way. Thematically, thanks to the breadth of our platform, we remain perfectly designed to invest into the AI opportunity. And that is what we see reflected in our deal flow and in our investment activity in the first half. Our infrastructure and private capital platforms are really firing on all cylinders. In infrastructure, we made several attractive investments in the energy sector, for instance, in AES and Copia Power. Copia Power will be the first deal in the newly announced Infrastructure 7 Fund. We also invested in physical infrastructure businesses that are providing critical non-discretionary services, for instance, CalDA and Urbezo. In ETT Private Capital, ETT 10 announced an offer for Intertech, one of the largest take privates in Europe so far this year, and actually the second largest UK sponsor-backed public-to-private transaction of all time. ETT10 also invested in ExoLaunch, a European space company, as well as Tacosil, a globally leading niche metric business. Post-Tacosil, ETT10 is now closed to fully invested with an appropriate vintage sector and geographic diversification. In Asia, we continue to have an attractive pipeline, in particular in India and Japan. In Japan, over the past 12 months, we've done three public to privates, including Fujitek, Care Net, and Mamesu. Finally, across the ECT early stage platform, deal flow is at record levels, also fueled by the announcement of ECT being selected as the manager for the scale-up euro fund. The momentum that we're seeing in this part of our business is really very exciting. Next slide, please. Our strategy of being the client-centric scale player focused on performance, that unique proposition that we can bring to the market of being the global provider of international alpha, that really resonates with investors. In addition, our performance track record is excellent. We've produced attractive short and long-term risk-adjusted returns. Really, no matter how you look at it, whether on a long-term or a short-term basis, we've delivered real cash back to investors, real alpha. As a result, our fundraising momentum is very strong, which has allowed us to successfully launch new products and grow existing strategies. In the last six months alone, we've added four new strategies with an expected fee-based AUM of more than 5 billion euros each. The AI Infrastructure Fund, the Scale-Up Europe Fund in private capital, the U.S. Industrial Value Fund 7 in real estate, and Kit 9 in caller capital. Delivering for our clients gives us the right to grow and scale existing business lines and strategies and to introduce attractive new products to help investors achieve their objectives when it comes to target returns and portfolio diversification. Next slide, please. Since the IPO, we have significantly expanded our offering for clients. At the time of the IPO, the EQT platform consisted primarily of the private equity and infrastructure flagship funds. Our private capital fundraising cycle was essentially one flagship fund, EPP9 at the time at roughly 16 billion euros. Since then we've added many strategies across the flagship, early stage, long hold and evergreen products. For many of these strategies we're today also offering a specific geographic focus across Europe North America and Asia as a result in this cycle for private capital we're targeting fundraising of approximately 55 billion euros that's an increase of 40 percent compared to the prior fundraising cycle similarly in in EPD infrastructure we've expanded the fundraising from only 16 billion euros in infra 5 at the time of the IPO to approximately 45 billion euros for the current fundraising cycle. An increase of approximately 80% versus the prior cycle, really an impressive achievement. In addition to the value-add funds, the infrastructure platform now includes the AI infrastructure fund, the transition infrastructure and active core strategies, as well as the evergreen vehicles. Next slide, please. Through the broadening of our offering, we've been able to create a much more diversified business since our IPO. In September 2019, EQT managed approximately 36 billion euros in fee-related AUM across six private equity and infrastructure-focused strategies. Today, we manage 155 billion euros of fee-generating AUM and 291 billion euros of total AUM. Proforma for Koli Capital and including the Scale-Up Europe Fund, our total AUM is now around 345 billion euros as of the 30th of June. We want to leverage our scale, our global presence and insights to deliver the most attractive strategies, products, solutions and performance for clients. The AI investment opportunity is a good example of this. Thanks to the breadth of our platform, we can find the most attractive risk-reward and allocate capital accordingly for clients. From making investments into exciting native AI companies out of our early-stage platform to investing into the opportunity at scale out of our infrastructure funds. With that, I hand it over to Gustav. Next slide, please.
Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. Turning to fundraising and highlights from the first half of the year, which has been very eventful with around 18 billion euros of gross inflow turned into fee generating AUM. For EQT11, we secured commitments equal to half the target fund size of 23 billion euros. Half the target fund size at the first close for EQT11 is slightly ahead of where we were with Infra 6 at the first close. Momentum remains strong with an active pipeline for the H2 tilted towards Q4 just given the recent first close. We expect activation of the fund during Q3. As communicated, we've set the target fund size for Infra7 at 21 billion euros, and we're seeing promising early indications from investors on the back of very strong fund performance. Infra7 has signed its first deal, acquiring Copia Power via a so-called pre-fund bridge, and we expect activation around year-end in line with earlier communication. At year-end, we expect to have held an early close for Infra7. However, we don't expect the first close to happen until H1, 2027. Hence, you should expect a smaller amount raised in 2026 than for EQT 11 at activation. As a reminder, EQT 11 and Infra 7 will not contribute to feed-generating AUM until activation, and hence EQT 11 is not part of the feed-generating AUM as of today. Across other closed-ended strategies, we've been equally active. The scale-up Europe fund is already anchored by a number of core investors representing the majority of the 5 billion euro target fund size, and their commitment is expected to be closed out during Q3 with the activation of the fund at the same time. We're in parallel opening up the fundraise for additional investors and are seeing strong demand on the 5 billion euro target fund size and we have not yet set a hard cap for the fund. The fund will be paid on committed capital and is expected to have an average management fee rate in line with EQT's overall blended management fee rate. The scale-up fund, the scale-up Europe fund will also mean that we will not be raising a second-generation growth fund. In addition to the scale-up Europe fund, we're also raising a large number of additional closed-ended funds, notably our U.S. industrial value real estate fund with a target of 6 billion U.S. dollars, as well as our transition infra fund. On the institutional open and open-ended side, the ActiveCore infrastructure strategy has now finalized its founding round and it signed its first two investments. The fund will be activated during Q3 and has so far raised 2.3 billion U.S. dollars of which a bit less than 1 billion US dollars will be seed generating directly at activation. The AI infrastructure fund reached more than 9 billion US dollars of seed generating AUM at the end of Q2 driven by taking in both primary capital to fund future growth as well as secondary capital to sell down investments in Infra 4 and Infra 5, as well as reflecting the strong value appreciation since launch. We expect continued strong development for AI infrastructure, which is open-ended. However, also noting that significant capital has been brought in during the last months, and hence you should not expect the same velocity of inflow going forward. The fund charges fees on NAV with the majority of the current capital i.e. the 9.4 billion came in as of July 1st and with the fee rate of between 50 to 75 bps currently closer to 50 bps due to the founder economics. Lastly for the private wealth evergreens I will talk more about those on the following pages. Next slide, please. As of today, we've closed out approximately 40 billion euros out of our 100 billion euro fundraising target. And currently, we have more than 20 vehicles in active fundraising across closed-ended and open-ended strategies. The remaining 60 billion includes funds currently in fundraising as well as a couple of funds that are yet to launch fundraising. In addition, we've added three significant new elements. The AI Infrastructure Fund, the ScaleUp Europe Fund, and the Color Capital Platform. Together, these are expected to add more than 40 billion euros of additional fundraising. Hence, we are today expecting to raise more than 140 billion euros in this fundraising cycle. Next slide, please. We're continuing to expand our evergreen offering. Today, including the color platform, we have now reached 10 billion euros in NAV and are continuing to grow rapidly with limited redemptions. During the first half, we have started two infrastructure vehicles, and we will, during Q3, launch an Asia-focused fund on the private capital side. In total, including color, we raised approximately 2.5 billion euros during the first half. And we expect that to be a relatively good proxy for forward-looking half years. However, with the notion that Q4 will probably be stronger than Q3, just due to the holiday period in Q3. We recognize that wealth investors are more sensitive to headlines and market sentiment. This has been visible across the industry. Private credit Evergreen products have faced most and most headwinds, while other vehicles focused on other strategies have been more resilient. For EQT without color, we had around 800 million euros of inflow in Q2, driven mainly by a weak April due to the market sentiment and then May and June more in line with the levels that we saw in Q1. We continue to see momentum on the infraside, on the back of strong performance and as an attractive alternative to the significant outflow on the credit side. Redemptions in Q2 continue to be very limited at the same levels as in Q1, hence around 0.5% of NAV per quarter across the platform. Next slide, please. So, let me give you an update on the caller transaction. We're on track to close transaction in mid to latter part of Q3, and integration planning is ongoing at full speed. The structural opportunity within secondaries is evident from the client demand for additional funds and new products and the continued muted distributions across the industry are widening that structural opportunity even further. Having closed KIP-9 earlier this year, Collar's largest fund ever, we plan to launch the KIP-10 fundraising later this year with the activation of the fund expected during the first half of next year, with fees charged on committed capital. Fundraising for CCO3, the credit fund, was launched in Q2 and has been well received by the market. CCO3 will charge fees on invested capital similar to their earlier fund vintages. Collor continues to see a growing market for structured products and insurance solutions with an innovative evergreen structure closed here in the first half and they expect to close a large traditional 10-year structured funding vehicle during the second half of the year. We identify insurance capital as one of the most interesting pools of capital within private markets. And through Collar, we get access to strong insurance relationships as well as strong structuring capabilities. We're also in early preparations for additional share asset classes, drawing benefits from the combined platform, including infrastructure secondaries. We continue to be very excited about secondaries and to join forces with the Collar team. And with that, I will hand over to Olof. Next slide, please.
Thank you very much, Gustav. So let's next turn to deal activity. And Pat covered our strong deal flow in H1, so let me focus on the exit activity. We announced about €7 billion of fund exits and another €10 billion for our co-investors during the first half of the year. We completed public sell-downs in Galderma and Asilis, in Enity and in Bayer Ref, fully realizing the listed portfolio assets. Public market exits represented about 30% of the exit volumes in H1. On the infrastructure side, we completed a minority stake sale in Nordic Ferry infrastructure, as well as Edge Connects from Infrastructure 4 and 5. And across the early stage platform, we completed the exit of Tubulis, from LSP7, which is the largest ever acquisition of a European private biotech company. We created a continuation vehicle for our well-performing assets in the Ventures One Fund, providing for the liquidity for those clients. At the start of the year, we announced an ambition to deliver exit volumes similar to last year's levels of about 20 billion euros of exits. We maintain this ambition for the year, despite the somewhat slower start to the year. As always, the market backdrop and specific deal situations can impact volumes in the short term, but we expect realizations to pick up versus the H1 volumes when we look a few quarters ahead. Looking at our pipeline for H2 specifically, we have a diversified pipeline across geography, sectors, and deal types, including a couple of potential IPOs and minority stake sales. Last year, exits were concentrated to private equity, and we expect exits to be more balanced towards infrastructure this year. And as the AI infrastructure strategy continues to ramp up, we also expect it to increase its ownership in edge connects through further purchases of shares from the infra 4 and 5. Next slide, please. Turning to value creation, all of our key funds continued to perform on or above plan. During the second quarter, key fund valuations increased by about 5%, and during the last 12 months, key fund valuations increased by 8%. Double-digit value uplift in infrastructure was led by strong underlying performance in the digital and energy subsectors in particular. as portfolio companies continue to secure new contract capacity and grow run rate EBITDA. Over the last 12 months, profitability accelerated across the private capital portfolio with 14% EBITDA growth in private capital Europe and North America. Looking at EQT 10 specifically, so mid-single digit value creation in H1, primarily due to strong operating performance with combined EBITDA growth of 24% over the last 12 months. In Nikitin 9, lower valuation multiples offset generally strong operating performances. And in the earlier private capital vintages, which are largely de-risked already with a meaningful share of realized assets, there we saw softer performance. And across private capital Asia, operating performance was broadly positive, which combined with stable valuation references supported largely positive value creation. So with that, let me hand it over to Kim.
Thank you. Thank you, Olof. And good morning, everyone. And moving to the financials next. Many of the ongoing fundraisings have started during 2026 and will continue into 2027. Thus, we expect, for example, the full year effects of EQT 11 and Intra 7 to occur in 2027 with a step up in management fee revenue as a consequence. In H1 2026, fee-related revenue was largely flat year over year, mainly due to large retroactive fees in the first half of 2025, as well as significant exits in earlier fund generations during the last 12 months, which is helping the strong fundraising momentum across the platform. Excluding the effects of the retroactive fees, the fee-related revenue increased by about 5% year over year. We saw a higher level of fee-related performance revenues in the period, driven by the performance in our evergreens and open-ended funds we expect this to continue to grow in h2 and into 2027 and beyond as we scale the open-ended platforms carried interest and investment income grew by around 40% carry was primarily driven by exits in private capital and investment income was driven by valuation uplift in and EQT's financial investments.
Taken together, this led to a total revenue growth of 5%.
We have remained disciplined in our hiring with headcount marginally increasing during the first half. Our key strategic priorities for hiring continues to be private wealth, AI capabilities, and geographical presence in Asia and the US. The guidance on mid-single-digit OPEX growth made at the start of the year is still our expectation. The growth is related to the key strategic priorities mentioned, as well as ramped up branding, marketing, and AI spend. In H1 2026, our EBITDA margin remained flat at 60%, and the fee-related EBITDA margin was 50%. During the latter part of 2027, it is likely that we reach the 25% fee-related EBITDA margin ambition we have mentioned before. I also wanted to repeat our guidance on COLOR. As communicated at the year-end presentation, we continue to expect COLOR to have a fee-related EBITDA of around $175 to $200 million for the full calendar year 2026. Next slide, please. Let's turn to the outlook for carried interest. This year, carry will be based on key funds currently in carry mode. These funds have to date recognized 1.4 billion euros and have yet to recognize around 600 million over a multi-year period. We have broadened the group of funds expected to enter carry mode next, and it now comprises Infra 4 and Infra 5, EQT 9 and BPA 8. Moving INFRA 5 and BPA 8 into this bucket reflects the progress these funds are making on their value creation and exit plans, and the pipeline of future carry contributors is maturing. Within this group, INFRA 4 is the furthest progressed, and we expect to continue to realize part of the holding in EdgeConnects, for example, across both INFRA 4 and INFRA 5. This puts Intra 4 on a value creation and exit path towards initial carry recognition in late 2027. Other funds in this bucket may move into carry mode from 2028 at the earliest. The funds in our most recent vintages are still investing and are fully focused on value creation. Next slide please. Some final remarks on how we continue to use our balance sheet to support to our growth agenda. The foundation of the balance sheets remains robust. We have low leverage ratios, we have strong cash generation and no bond maturities until 2028. And our revolver remains undrawn. Worth noting on cash generation is that we had some 400 million euro of cash carry in H1 2026. With a well capitalized balance sheet, We have also returned around €750 million to shareholders over the last 12 months through dividends and buybacks. And we continue to have ample capacity to put our balance sheet to work, and I will hand over to Gustav to comment on that.
Thank you, Kim. The work falls into a couple of main buckets, four. First, long-term fund commitments. Our commitments alongside clients currently at around 900 million euros, which aligns us with our investors and grows naturally with the platform. Secondly, the strategic balance sheet investments of approximately 2 billion euros, mainly seeding our evergreen private wealth vehicles and bridging new close-ended strategies through launch. These investments are designed to build EQT for the long term, to create fee generating AUM. Thirdly, structured solutions where we expect to increase investing into bespoke structures to drive business momentum and to add fee paying commitments. This includes the structured insurance solutions where IKT's balance sheet will participate in part of the equity investment. This is also one of the growth opportunities that the caller transaction brings. And then, of course, lastly, M&A. The strategic use of the balance sheet is visible in the P&L. Investment income exceeded 200 million euros in H1, more than what we generated in full year 2025. This reflects the broadening of the platform as well as the strong value appreciation of the positions that we held on the balance sheet investments, especially on the infrastructure side. Assuming continued performance, we expect investment income to continue to be strong in H2 2026, in 27 and beyond. We believe that the level of carried interest and investment income achieved in H1 is a good proxy also for the second half of the year. And with that, I will turn back to Per for some concluding remarks. Next slide, please.
Thank you, Kim and Gustav. To summarize, in a tricky market environment during the first half, we delivered strong performance and executed well on our strategy. Our long-term approach to building the most attractive global client-centric platform in our industry is paying off. A great example of this is the decision by the European Commission to select us to manage the scale-up fund for Europe, A testament to our market-leading position that we've built in Europe and the quality of the early stage platform. The combination with Kohler Capital is on track to close in the third quarter and will further strengthen our ability to serve clients. We were able to take advantage of the volatile market environment to unlock attractive new investments. Thanks to the breadth of our platform, we are perfectly positioned to invest into the AI opportunity, and that's reflected in our strong deal flow. In the first half, we saw healthy value creation across our business, most notably in ECT infrastructure, where we're seeing exceptional momentum across strategies. In ETT10, we also saw mid-single-digit value creation in the quarter, and overall operating performance in the private equity portfolio remains strong. In ETT10, the portfolio delivered 24% EBITDA growth in the last 12 months. Across the firm, we remain focused on monetizing investments, and we have an ambitious exit pipeline for the next 6 to 12 months. We're really building on a record year of exits that we had in 2025 when we sent back 40 billion euros to clients in the first half. We delivered 17 billion euros of distributions, and based on the pipeline that we're seeing and subject to market conditions, we maintain our ambition to deliver exits in this year approximately in line with last year's volumes. Fundraising momentum across the firm remains strong, the AI infrastructure fund is off to an excellent start, reception for the scale-up Europe fund has been excellent, and we've held the first close for EQD11 at 50% of the target fund size. We also see continued nice momentum across our evergreen platform with 2.5 billion euros of in the first half, reaching a new milestone of $10 billion in NAV. Before I open up for Q&A, I'd now like to take the opportunity to extend a big thank you to Kim Henriksen. This will be Kim's last webcast as CFO of ETT before he moves on to a senior advisor role within the firm. Kim is a deeply valued partner, colleague, and a friend, and he's done an outstanding job as the CFO during one of the most transformative periods of our firm. Kim is going to remain with EQT, and in that advisor role, he will be supporting our portfolio companies on IPO preparations and public company governance. So a big thank you to Kim. At the same time, I'm delighted to welcome Gustav as the new CFO. Gustav has played an important role in the strategic growth of our firm. He's been closely involved in the acquisitions of Exeter, BPA, and Color, and also in the development of our Evergreen platform. As part of the transition from Kim to Gustav, Olof will take on additional responsibilities within the finance organization, which is also exciting.
Operator
So with that, I open up for Q&A. operator please thank you to ask a question you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced to withdraw your question please press star 1 and 1 again we are now going to take our first question just one moment and this question comes from the line of arnold iblaat from bnb paribas please go ahead um hi good morning i've got uh two questions please.
Firstly, could we come back on the investment income? I'm just, the 200 million is quite a large number. I'm just wondering if you could give a bit more detail as to which strategy it comes from. It seems like quite a chunky return, 10% over six months if it's over the 2 billion investment. Just a bit more detail there would be helpful. And secondly, with color capital, clearly there's an opportunity, as you've described, to address more the wealth channel. Are there any other avenues, distribution avenues you could pursue, perhaps small institutional mandates where they allocate, where mandates seek to allocate the significant investments to one manager to do the lot in terms of investments for them? Yeah, so just wondering there, and what investments are required to achieve sort of these step-ups in wealth and other distribution opportunities?
Thank you for those questions. I will hand both of those questions to Gustav. Just a quick comment on Kohler Capital. In addition to private wealth, as we have previously communicated, we are also really excited about the opportunity in the insurance channel that we're seeing. But I let Gustav elaborate on that.
Yeah, happy to. Maybe starting a little bit with the investment income side. And I would say that, as I alluded to, it's very broad-based across the platform, but with skewness to the infraside, just given the strong performance there. I think that the way to think about it going forward, so to speak, is if you think about, I would, we have around 3 billion, so the 2 billion plus 900 million of fund investments. So in total, we're talking about around 3 billion where we're generating around 200 million. So that's, let's say, just shy of 15% return during the half year. I think if you think about that, then it's not like a crazy number given the return targets that we have. Not all of the 300 million are gonna have the same type of return targets just given that some of it is more like bridges and stuff like that. But if you think about it in a 10 to 15% return on the balance sheet, you kind of end up in that ballpark. So that's how I would think about the investment income side. When it comes to color capital, I would say, I think what we want to build across is really to create more solutions for investors. And that goes for private wealth investors, it goes for institutional investors, it goes for insurance clients that pair reference. I would say in the area of let's say smaller institutions we have not maybe had like the same type of success as some other firms in Europe and I think this gives us another tool in the toolbox in order to be able to attack that part of the market. So it's for sure an interesting area for it. And then lastly, when it comes to growing in wealth, I would say that we've taken the majority of those investments. We're going to continue to invest into the brand and marketing side, even though I think the cost that you have in 2026 is a relatively good proxy. It could probably go up a bit in 27 and beyond, but not to the same extent given that we've grown the sales organization. Now we've grown the brand and marketing setup. So now I think we feel that we are well equipped. Of course, also given that we've gotten a lot of strong people and relationships through the color acquisition.
Operator
Thank you. We are now going to move to our next question. And this question comes from the line of Hayley Tam from UPS. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Can I ask two and also then a follow-up on the investment income one, but the two initial questions. On the AI Info Fund, that's $9.4 billion already, which is fantastic. Could you clarify for us how much of that was primary versus secondary? And I guess specifically how much was Edge Connect? next and I think you mentioned there might be more of that in the future so just to get a handle on that would be great. Secondly the effective management fee I think it was 1.4% in H1 last year I couldn't see a disclosure of what it was this year and I heard what Kim said about retroactive fees but I just wanted if you could help us understand that for the underlying momentum that would be great. And then just to follow up on the investment income I think you mentioned the ECT balance sheet will participate in equity investment or insurance structures going forward. Can I just clarify whether that's a recycling of the $3 billion or whether we should expect that to be incremental in the future? Thank you.
Thank you for those questions. I suggest we answer them in the order that you ask them and maybe Olof takes the first one and then Kim and Gustav.
Yeah. On the AI Infra Fund, I believe was your first question, Hayley, This is a structure that is invested in EdgeConnects solely at this point in time. And a large part of the $9.4 billion is primary capital that we have raised for that. That's the vast majority of this. And the primary capital that we raise for the fund is used to fund the CapEx and the growth for EdgeConnects primarily. and that is also driving a meaningful uplift that you see in the valuation of the AEI fund in this quarter but it also means that we are investing in the future growth of this and that's why we also have a very strong outlook for the performance of this fund from here.
And maybe if I take the last two questions, I would say on the effective management fee, For the closed-ended side, it's unaffected, so to speak, so the 1.4 is still valid. Of course, when we bring in additional capital in from especially the AI infrastructure fund with the lower fee rate, but also note that the 9.4, the vast majority of that was included as of June 30th, so to speak, so there is no management fee for the first half, but it's included in the end of the period management or fee generating AUM. So it will be a little bit distorted there just given that in the first half of it. And then when it comes to the investment income, it's not part of the three billions. So there might be a bit of incremental increase in it. The way to think about it is however also so that some of the other capital, i.e. the $2 billion, will come back. So I wouldn't put it on top, but I would think that the $3 billion will probably continue to grow, probably at a little bit slower pace than what we've had in the last 18 months, just given the significant ramp-up that we've had on the evergreen side, which has, let's say, eaten quite a lot of balance sheet capital, which then over time will probably, let's say, work its way into other things. So that's how you should think about it.
Operator
Thank you very much. Thank you. We are now going to move to our next question. And this question comes from the line of Nicolas Herrmann from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for the presentation and taking my questions. and best of luck to Kim in the new role. Two questions from my side, please. So, I appreciate you seeing upside to the fundraising cycle. You referenced the challenging fundraising environment for real estate, but my sense is that it's also just more challenging across the piece, given, I guess, geopolitical and AI disruption or AI-driven uncertainty. clearly you guys are very well positioned as the alpha platform and we'll take share. But I guess are you seeing that just that challenging fundraising too? And I'm wondering, does like the first pose of EQT11, which is I guess percentage-wise lower than prior vintages, is that kind of indicative that it is just a bit tougher? Just kind of thoughts on the general fundraising environment, please. Secondly, thank you for the color on expected time frame for carry recognition with EQT9 at 0.3 times DPI in profile and DPA at 1.1 times DPI. I guess what gives you confidence that those funds will enter carry mode by 2028 and I guess what level of DPI would you expect those funds to have reached by then? And then just a very quick follow-up if I may on the investment income, was there any investment income kind of put within that, I guess, the central part of your group that was also linked to the Connex and AI infrastructure fund, please, thank you.
I can start. So, on the fundraising environment, the comment that I made was specifically to real estate and the asset class having faced a more challenging fundraising environment for a longer period of time. And we see activity levels in real estate picking up. And, you know, on the back of the strong performance that we've had historically, we've doubled our fee-based AUM in this part of our business and if anything compared to the last five years we think that the outlook for for for this asset class is likely to be more favorable and so probably including a more benign fundraising amount overall for the industry you know we very much agree with your characterization what we're seeing now is something we've spoken about in in previous calls with you that lps institutional investors but also private wealth platforms consolidating their gp relationships um and um and and that is happening right now and and in this environment we have been able to take market share thanks to the breadth of our platform the strong strategic positioning that we've had but also the outperformance that we've generated, right? Just to remind you again, in 2025, we sent back 40 billion euros of NAD and in our private equity strategies in Asia and in Europe and the US, that was more than 30% of NAD, which is three times industry average. And that has helped us in our fundraisers in BPA9, where we hit the hard cap. And also now in EQT 11, where we've secured 50% of the fund size target, I would say that is in line with our expectations. If you look at Infrafund 6, as Gustav mentioned earlier, the first close that we had for that fund was actually slightly below the 50% that we've secured so far for EQD11. So we think we're in an excellent position in this fundraise and based on the strong deal flow that we have right now, also in the co-invest that we're generating, we want to build on that momentum during the second half and then into 2027. In terms of what gives us confidence on the carry recognition, it's just, you know, the exit pipeline that we're seeing for all these funds that we're working on. Of course, it's always subject to market conditions, but that's reflected in the guidance that we've given now. The only additional point I would make is that, of course, when it comes to infrastructure for specifically the way this fund is positioned in terms of the AI infrastructure opportunity and the momentum that we're seeing in performance around that and exposure that this fund and and in for five hats we we we see a good and credible path to reaching the DPI for infra four by the end of 2027 as Olof touched upon. When it comes to investment income I'll let Gustav or Olof comment on that.
Yeah I can go and so I would say that the as I said the investment income is broad based it's not it's not so much specifically to the AI infra fund however of course given the performance of Edge, of the Edge asset, Edge McNair asset across a number of different funds that we have including Infra 4, 5, and 6. That is a contributor to it, but it is really a broad-based value that we see.
Okay, helpful, thank you. I guess it was more because I saw that the investment income seems to be put in this kind of central function rather than across the individual operating entities, which is why I asked that question, actually that's helpful.
Operator
Thank you. We are now going to move to our next question. And this question comes from the line of Hermann Kerik from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, thanks for the presentation. So maybe on the fundraising cycle, I mean before you talked about 100 billion and now it's more than 140. I know that's including color, but would you say you were conservative from the start or have you seen a stronger than expected demand. And also based on taking market share or slightly improving fundraising market overall. Then on the scale of your fund, it sounds like you're going to approach the 5 billion target quite fast. When could we expect to get a hard cap? And in terms of your capacity from the organization, will you need to add anything more to be able to manage that fund?
And then lastly, maybe on on cost outlook so you reiterated the 2026 outlook could you say anything about how we should think about it going into 27 and beyond thank you yeah thanks for those questions um i can start and um i'll start with the scale of euro fund and um a question on on target fund size we've set the 5 billion euros. We're seeing very strong momentum in terms of deal flow, client interest in this strategy. And we will set the hard cap in coordination with the anchor investors and the European Commission in due course. But based on what we can see now, we definitely see interest in this strategy that would support a larger fund size than the 5 billion euros. but we will set a hard cap and communicate that in due course. In terms of the fundraising cycle, going from 100 to 140 billion, that's a reflection just like you said it in terms of us adding coal capital to the platform, but also all of the new product launches that we've done, the Scale-Up Bureau Fund, the AI Infrastructure Fund, all of these initiatives and products were not part of the initial communication. Overall, in terms of the fundraising environment in general, I would say, if anything, we're facing a tougher fundraising environment right now compared to when we communicated this. But thanks to our strategic positioning, the performance that we're generating, the alpha that we keep on producing, we are taking market share in this environment. With that, I think I'll hand it over to Gustav and Kim if there's anything more you want to add to the fundraising cycle and then please also comment on the cost outlook.
Yeah, I can comment on the cost outlook. First of all, remember that we did take out some costs in 2025, so the 2026 number is also a reflection of that, so you should expect that the sort of general cost inflation in the industry and for us as well and sort of the investments we're making in the brand and marketing and our amazing people will continue. We haven't given an exact cost growth number, but what we have said is that the margin ambition of 55% fee-related EBITDA margin could be reached during the course of 2027, so I hope that is helpful.
And that margin guidance does reflect the investments that we intend to make into our early stage platform to support us investing in a successful way, the scale up Europe fund and all of the deal flow that we're seeing now in this part of our business. We are effectively doubling the AUM in our early stage tech strategies and of course we're building our organization accordingly it's a fantastic opportunity for us actually strategically to continue to cement our market leading position in europe and we're definitely going to seize that opportunity thank you michelle a great summer and kim um i wish you the best in your new world thanks for a good cooperation everybody yes thank you we are now going to take our next question and this question comes from the line of hubert lamb from bank of america
Operator
Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to also thank Kim for all the help over the years, and good luck in the new role. So, first question is on the AI Infra Fund. Can you talk about how big this fund can get? I know it's open-ended, but is there a size that it can achieve? And how do you think about adding new investments in our strategy beyond EdgeConnects? The second question is on the Infra Strategy. Can you talk about the appetite for Infra7, just given you're also seeing influence into the AI infrastructure strategy at the core, any risk of cannibalization going on within your core, your key, your flagship, thank you.
I can start with the second part of the question. We don't see any cannibalization for the Infra7 fundraising. If you think about it, it's a much broader thematic focus, and the AI infrastructure is really quite narrow in terms of focusing on the AI infrastructure build out and investing into this capex super cycle. And the seed investment is EdgeConnex, so the investment that we would be making in addition to EdgeConnex in this strategy would be sort of directly connected to that. So it's much more narrow, and hence no cannibalization, really quite complementary to the rest of the strategies that we're offering in ICT infrastructure. And in terms of the size of the AI infrastructure, of course, it's a very scalable setup that we have. But I let Olof or Gustav comment on that.
Yeah, and I would say a little bit as I alluded to, I think there is, we've taken in quite a lot of capital now in the first half of the year and I don't, you should not expect at least in the short term the same type of velocity. With that said, of course, we have the ambition to continue to grow it. We think that it's a significant market opportunity. We're not going to give any numbers of how large it can be, so it's rather a question about like at what velocity can we and should we bring a new capital into it.
Operator
Thank you. We are now going to move to our next question. And this question comes from the line of Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for the presentation. I've got two questions, please. I think the slide nine is really interesting, where on the right-hand side you just show this organic growth and broadening out of your various now infrastructure strategies. So more of a conceptual question, but it's, you know, based on addressable markets and the kind of indications you're getting in terms of client demand, just how should we think about the kind of relative sizing of your flagship AI infra, transition infra, and the longer hold strategies here? Is there any reason over the medium term that the capital markets, the initiative about this?
I'll take the first question. So, if we look at our infrastructure platform, the overall statement would be that the limiting factor really in that part of our business is not deal flow, it's really access to capital. And we have, I think, designed the platform in a very nice way with a number of complementary strategies that really can scale significantly over time and to answer your question if you take a long-term perspective none of these there's no reason that any of those strategies that we've added to the platform in addition to the value add fund that they wouldn't be able to reach the same size or higher compared to the infra seven fund size that we're targeting now and that That includes the Transition Infra Fund, but certainly also the AI Infra Fund, and actually the active core infrastructure strategy where we're also seeing really, really nice momentum. And there are also other external benchmarks out there for that part of our business that would support over time a much larger fund size compared to the one that we have today. But of course, this is a very long-term perspective that I'm sharing now. In terms of the second question on transaction and advisory fees, I'll hand that over to Gustav and Kim.
Thanks. I can comment on that. I believe that we gave guidance that it would be in the region of 100 million or similar to last year when we last spoke. And I would say that the first half number is still a good proxy also for the second half number. It is, like you say, it's dependent on deal flow, but it's also there's some moving parts in it. So that's our best guess for the moment.
Operator
Thank you. There are no further questions. I will now hand the call back to the speakers for closing remarks.
Well, thank you everybody for joining today's call. Appreciate all the questions, and we're wishing you all a very nice summer, so thank you.
