Oslo: Norway's Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, reported a first-quarter loss of 415 billion kroner ($40 billion), highlighting ongoing difficulties within the tech sector. "The quarter has been impacted by significant market fluctuations. Our equity investments had a negative return, largely driven by the tech sector," stated Norges CEO Nicolai Tangen.

According to Anadolu Agency, the fund's value stood at 18.53 trillion kroner ($1.78 trillion) at the end of the first quarter, marking a decrease of 1.6%. A significant factor in this decline was unfavorable currency fluctuations, which contributed to a market value drop of 1.22 trillion kroner ($117.3 billion) during the first quarter. "The krone strengthened against several of the main currencies during the quarter. The currency movements contributed to a decrease in the fund's value of 879 billion kroner ($84.3 billion)," Tangen added.

Managed by NBIM on behalf of the Norwegian populace, the fund was established in the 1990s to allocate surplus earnings from Norway's oil and gas sector. Today, it makes investments in over 8,600 businesses across 63 nations. The fund holds stakes in major American tech companies, including Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, and Alphabet. A notable three-week sell-off in March resulted in a depletion of $2.7 trillion from the market value of these tech sector giants, spurred by growing concerns over the implications of US President Donald Trump's tariff plans.

This downturn followed a tech sell-off in January instigated by the release of an AI model developed by DeepSeek, a Chinese company. The startup claimed its massive language model was created at a fraction of the cost of American counterparts, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, resulting in substantial losses for firms like AI giant Nvidia.