When people spend that amount of money without telling anyone it’s probably not an investment but either speculation or for personal use.
Why would anyone need this much woodland for themselves? It’s unlikely he bought all of this for himself as a vacation spot. So he’s probably buying this speculating on a rise in prices for this kind of land.
And that’s interesting. Why would swedens forests increase massively in value?
The sellers in this case were SCA, who own large amounts of forest land in Sweden that they grow trees on.
It seems unlikely that they would sell it if the land value was expected to be riding, in particular for a forestry use-case, in which SCA are already specialized.
The most compelling theory so far is that he purchased the land for use in cross-country skiing, which he apparently has a big interest in. This part of Jämtland is good for cross-country skiing, something I know from first-hand experience.
“Woodlands” is a stretch, as the property sits around or above the tree line (elevation thingy).
Allegedly Mr Karp is a big skiing enthusiast with several properties in Norwegian skiing spots already. However, 240M SEK seems a bit much for a property he can’t reasonably have an ROI on. I have a hard time believing there won’t be data centers built on the property within 5 years.
When people spend that amount of money without telling anyone it’s probably not an investment but either speculation or for personal use.
Why would anyone need this much woodland for themselves? It’s unlikely he bought all of this for himself as a vacation spot. So he’s probably buying this speculating on a rise in prices for this kind of land.
And that’s interesting. Why would swedens forests increase massively in value?
The sellers in this case were SCA, who own large amounts of forest land in Sweden that they grow trees on.
It seems unlikely that they would sell it if the land value was expected to be riding, in particular for a forestry use-case, in which SCA are already specialized.
The most compelling theory so far is that he purchased the land for use in cross-country skiing, which he apparently has a big interest in. This part of Jämtland is good for cross-country skiing, something I know from first-hand experience.
It’s probably for their favorite sport: invite rich people to hunt humans in a huge forest.
“Woodlands” is a stretch, as the property sits around or above the tree line (elevation thingy). Allegedly Mr Karp is a big skiing enthusiast with several properties in Norwegian skiing spots already. However, 240M SEK seems a bit much for a property he can’t reasonably have an ROI on. I have a hard time believing there won’t be data centers built on the property within 5 years.
240M SEK is roughly 24M USD
Alex Karp had a net worth in excess of 18B USD in 2025 if wikipedia is to be believed.
This is 1/800th of his net worth, or 0.125%
It’s not like he needs to monetize this land immediately to keep making money from the rest of his net worth
Edited because I made a silly mistake in conversion rates. 1 sek is roughly 0.1 USD, not 10 USD.
No, 1 SEK is not 10 USD.
Come on past me, that’s not even hard maths. Thanks, I’ll fix my comment to reflect that two orders of magnitude error I just made…
My guess is a massive data centre, tbh