Norway’s wealth fund screens investments with Anthropic’s Claude

Norway’s $2 trillion oil fund, one of the world’s largest investors, said on Thursday it is now using artificial intelligence to screen investments for potential reputational and ethical risks.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) manages the fund, established in the 1990s to invest in revenues from Norway’s oil and gas industry. It is an investor in more than 7,200 companies in 60 countries and holds a stake in approximately 1.5% of the world’s publicly traded stocks.

It has long been influential in the global market and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing. It uses its influence and voting rights to set expectations for the companies and markets in which it invests, including the impact on people, the environment and society.

The fund’s management team said in its annual responsible investing report that it now uses AI to provide governance and sustainability insights to portfolio managers.

NBIM said the technology means it can expand the scope and scale of the information it analyzes and lead to “more rapid identification of material risks”.

An NBIM spokesperson told CNBC that the organization’s ESG risk monitoring team first began using Anthropic’s Claude AI model in daily work in November 2024. They said it has since become “an important tool in our monitoring of ESG risk across the portfolio.”

In its report on Thursday, NBIM said broad-based AI models were being implemented to screen all companies on the first day of their entry into the equity portfolio in 2025.

“These tools help us quickly scan a wide range of publicly available information that goes beyond information typically covered by data vendors,” the report said. “Where risks arise around key themes, the Master conducts deeper investigations by providing contextual summaries.”

NBIM receives daily AI-generated risk assessments for investments made the previous day, and the fund manager said this allowed his team to immediately consider ways to mitigate them.

“Within 24 hours of our investment, AI tools flag new companies in the fund’s equity portfolio with potential links, for example, to forced labour, corruption or fraud,” NBIM said in its report on Thursday. he said.

“Often this information is not covered in international media or in warnings from data providers. We always review information before making an investment or risk decision. In many cases, we have identified and sold these investments before the broader market has reacted to the risks, thus avoiding potential losses.”

NBIM said using AI in this way is particularly valuable for investigating smaller companies in emerging markets, where news about the company may be limited to small media outlets in local languages.

NBIM CEO Nicolai Tangen said in the report, “Artificial intelligence is changing the way we work as investors,” and stated that sustainability and governance are “inseparable from financial performance” and that “the world will remain complex and uncertain.”

The value of the fund is around 2.2 trillion dollars. In 2025, it made an annual profit of 2.36 trillion crowns, or 246.9 billion dollars.

Almost 40% of NBIM’s investments are in US stocks, with its most valuable assets including a 1.3% stake in Nvidia, a 1.2% stake in Apple and a 1.3% stake in Microsoft. NBIM also invests in fixed income, real estate and renewable energy infrastructure.

But some ethics-related decisions last year drew criticism, especially from the White House.

In September, the US State Department told CNBC that it was “very disturbed” by NBIM’s decision to exit its positions in American machinery manufacturer Caterpillar and five Israeli banks, citing the “unacceptable risk” that the companies were contributing to rights violations in the Palestinian territories.

NBIM’s separation from Caterpillar “appears to be based on illegitimate allegations against Caterpillar and the Israeli government,” a spokesman said.

Norwegian finance minister Jens Stoltenberg responded by saying the liquidation was “not a political decision.”

Until November 2025, Norges Bank’s Board of Directors was deciding whether companies should be excluded from the fund’s investment portfolio or placed on the observation list. These decisions were informed by the Ethics Council, an independent body appointed by the Norwegian Ministry of Finance.

But following controversy over some purges last year, interim guidelines have been put in place as a review of NBIM’s ethics framework is due to be presented by a government-appointed committee later this year.

Under the interim guidelines, Norges Bank can no longer make decisions regarding the monitoring or exclusion of a company from the fund; but may annul previous decisions to exclude a company or place it on the watch list. Meanwhile, the Ethics Council has been stripped of its ability to recommend observation or exclusion, at least until the ethics framework review has been completed.

“The conflict in Gaza and the debates about the fund’s ethical framework and investments in Israel have shown how complex and challenging this could be in practice in 2025,” Tangen said in Thursday’s report. he said.

“While the fund’s ethical framework is under revision, we are continuing our responsible investing efforts by strengthening the connection between ownership and investment decisions and focusing on what matters financially.”