Comment by joe_mamba
5 days ago
>They probably have enough money to fund their own Anthropic competitor.
Which is bizarre to me Norway doesn't have a booming tech sector with all hat wealth fund acting as the biggest VC.
They instead use their wealth fund to invest in US's tech sector. Baffling.
The point of the fund is to invest outside of Norway so as to avoid the Norwegian economy overheating and increasing inflation
Considering the fact that the US is complaining about Norway putting too much money into the US market, imagine what would happen if all that money was spent in Norway. It would be chaos.
> imagine what would happen if all that money was spent in Norway.
It would create jobs, sovereignty, intellectual property and soft power?
Instead it goes to strengthening the tech monopoly of a country that threatens to invade your neighbour.
It was tried in early 1980s and nearly drove any non oil-related industry in the country extinct.
Norway has a manpower bottleneck. The UK had spent its oil windfall domestically and it barely registered. But for a nation of then some 4 million the economy melts down with so much monetary mass.
There's only so much you can do with 5 million people. Especially in a field where network effects amd scale matter a lot.
Finland has same population as Norway, has way less money, but has 3x the scaleups. Even bigger difference with vs Netherlands.
Even Norway themselves admit they're the underperformers of the Nordics. https://skywlkr.no/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/TechScaleupNor...
So blaming population is a cheap excuse that doesn't hold water. Especially that you can always import the skilled people you lack, when you have virtually unlimited money and some of the highest standards of living in the world.
The fund is specifically mandated to not invest inside Norway to avoid making an enormous bubble and sky high inflation.