The infrastructure thesis behind NJF Holdings

For most investors, sectors are the organising principle

Technology. Sport. Financial services. Healthcare.

But viewed over time, NJF Holdings’ investment activity has followed a different logic. The common thread across many of its major positions has not been industry exposure alone, but a repeated focus on infrastructure: the systems, platforms and underlying architecture that enable markets to function and scale.

That pattern appears across sport, fintech, aerospace, artificial intelligence and life sciences alike

In the early 2000s, Nicole Junkermann identified sports rights and distribution as a structurally undervalued layer of the global sports economy. At the time, much of the market still viewed sport primarily as entertainment. But the more durable value sat beneath the spectacle itself: media rights, distribution relationships and the commercial infrastructure surrounding live events.

That thesis shaped NJF’s investment in Infront Sports & Media, which grew into one of the world’s leading sports marketing and media businesses, spanning properties including the FIFA World Cup and Winter Olympics.

A similar logic later emerged in financial technology

While much of the fintech market focused on consumer-facing applications, NJF’s interest centred more heavily on the infrastructure layer beneath digital finance: payments architecture, cross-border functionality and platform integration.

Revolut represented part of that shift. The long-term opportunity was not simply a banking app, but a unified financial platform built for a mobile-first economy rather than adapted from legacy banking systems.

The same instinct informed NJF’s position in SpaceX

The investment case extended beyond any single commercial application of space technology. The more important question was whether reusable launch systems could fundamentally alter the economics of access to orbit. If that infrastructure became reliable and scalable, entire adjacent industries could emerge on top of it.

In each case, the pattern was similar. The market narrative focused on the visible product. The underlying infrastructure often mattered more.

That same thinking has shaped NJF’s more recent activity in sport through Gameday by NJF Holdings

Women’s sport has experienced rapid audience growth over the past decade, but in many markets the commercial systems surrounding those audiences remain underdeveloped. Rights monetisation, sponsorship integration, digital distribution and fan data infrastructure have often lagged behind consumption trends.

Gameday’s work with Italy’s Lega Volley Femminile reflects a belief that the next phase of growth in women’s sport will depend not only on audience expansion, but on building the commercial and technological infrastructure capable of supporting it.

The same broader thesis is increasingly visible in AI and life sciences

As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded within healthcare and scientific research, the question is no longer only about model capability. It is also about data architecture, governance and trust.

NJF’s investment in Owkin sits within that context. Owkin’s federated learning model allows research institutions to collaborate without centralising sensitive patient data, enabling large-scale analysis while reducing some of the regulatory and institutional risks associated with conventional data pooling.

That approach reflects a wider view increasingly shaping both AI and healthcare: that infrastructure design will play a decisive role in determining which systems prove scalable, trusted and commercially durable over time.

The sectors themselves may appear disconnected

But across sport, fintech, aerospace and healthcare, a consistent theme has emerged inside NJF Holdings’ investment approach: the belief that long-term value is often created not only by the product users see, but by the infrastructure layer that makes the market possible in the first place.