When the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund tells you it has a problem with one of your board members, it’s the kind of feedback that’s hard to ignore. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, sitting on roughly $2.3 trillion in assets, has withheld its vote on the reappointment of John Elkann to Meta’s board of directors.

The reason is almost refreshingly mundane in an era of complex corporate drama: Elkann, the fund argues, simply has too many jobs.

The “over-boarded” problem

Elkann currently serves as chairman of Stellantis, the automaker born from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group. He’s also CEO of Exor, the Agnelli family’s investment vehicle. Now add a Meta board seat on top of that, and you start to see why Norway’s fund managers raised an eyebrow.

Norway’s fund owns approximately 1% of Meta’s shares. The fund has consistently opposed the reappointment of directors it considers overextended across major companies. Tesla has been on the receiving end of similar scrutiny.

Beyond the board vote: shareholder proposals

The Elkann vote wasn’t the only place where Norway’s fund made its presence felt at Meta’s annual meeting. The fund supported five out of ten shareholder proposals brought before the company in 2024.

Among the proposals the fund backed was a demand for Meta to conduct a data privacy impact assessment specifically related to its AI initiatives.

Meta’s AI ambitions don’t exist in a vacuum. The company poured resources into the Diem stablecoin project before regulatory pressure forced it to abandon the effort. It rebranded its entire corporate identity around the metaverse. And it continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure.

Why institutional governance pressure matters for crypto

Meta remains one of the most significant corporate actors in the digital-asset adjacent space. Its abandoned Diem project was, at its peak, the most ambitious private stablecoin initiative ever attempted. The regulatory backlash it provoked helped shape the framework that stablecoin issuers navigate today.

When a $2.3 trillion fund pushes for better governance at Meta, it’s indirectly pushing for more rigorous oversight of those initiatives. A data privacy impact assessment for AI, for instance, could surface information about how Meta handles user data in ways that are directly relevant to decentralized identity protocols and competing privacy-focused blockchain projects.

The Norwegian fund isn’t selling its Meta stake. It’s staying invested and using its shareholder rights to push for change from the inside.