Basel, Switzerland · Startup Araris Biotech is a Basel-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company founded in 2020 as a spin-out from the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich. The company develops a proprietary antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) linker technology that enables precise attachment of cytotoxic payloads to standard, unmodified antibodies for targeted cancer therapy — unlike conventional ADC approaches that require chemical modification of the antibody itself. This plug-and-play technology gives pharma partners a faster, cleaner path to next-generation ADC cancer treatments. Araris raised a CHF 36 million Series A in 2023 led by V-Bio Ventures, with participation from Novartis Venture Fund and Pfizer Ventures. The company represents Switzerland's strength in precision medicine and its deep integration between academic research institutes and commercially focused biotech.
Startup Series A BiotechOncologyADCDrug Discovery
Lausanne, Switzerland · Startup Astrocast is a Lausanne-based satellite IoT company founded in 2017 by Fabien Jordan and Jonas Weiss as an EPFL spin-out and ESA BIC Switzerland resident. The company designs, builds, and operates a constellation of nanosatellites in low earth orbit that provide two-way data connectivity to IoT devices in the most remote locations on Earth — including maritime vessels, agricultural sensors, and remote infrastructure monitoring systems. Astrocast's network eliminates coverage gaps where terrestrial mobile networks cannot reach, enabling clients in agriculture, maritime, utilities, and environmental monitoring to track assets and collect data globally. The company has launched multiple satellites, maintains commercial operations, and is listed on Euronext Growth Oslo, making it one of Switzerland's few publicly traded space startups.
Startup Growth SpaceTechSatellite IoTConnectivity
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Beekeeper is a Zurich-based enterprise software company founded in 2012 by Cristian Grossmann and Flavio Pfaffhauser to build a communication and operations platform for frontline workers — those in manufacturing, hospitality, retail, and logistics who don't sit at a desk. The platform provides a mobile-first digital workspace enabling team messaging, task management, document sharing, and HR workflows for workers without corporate email addresses. Beekeeper raised a Series C in 2021 led by Alpana Ventures with participation from Atomico and Swiss Post, bringing total funding to over $100 million. The platform is used by companies including Marriott, Hilton, and Heathrow Airport, supporting over 1,000 enterprise customers globally. Beekeeper is a flagship example of Zurich's SaaS ecosystem building at the intersection of human capital management and operational technology.
Startup Series C HRTechEnterprise SaaSFuture Of WorkFrontline Workforce
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Climeworks is one of Europe's most important climate-tech companies because it is building commercial direct air capture systems that remove carbon dioxide from ambient air. The company operates in a category that sits beyond emissions reduction alone: carbon removal infrastructure intended to address legacy emissions and hard-to-abate sectors. Its plants use modular collectors and specialized filters to capture CO2, after which the gas can be permanently stored or used in industrial processes. That combination of chemical engineering, energy systems, project execution, and long-term offtake sales makes Climeworks a very different kind of startup from software-led climate businesses. It is a capital-intensive industrial platform that depends on trust, scientific credibility, and customer willingness to commit to the future carbon-removal market. In the European ecosystem, Climeworks matters not only for its own category leadership, but also because it shows that globally significant climate infrastructure can be conceived, financed, and scaled from Europe. It serves as a benchmark for founders and investors interested in hard-tech and climate infrastructure companies where the technical ambition, funding requirements, and operational complexity are far greater than in conventional SaaS.
Startup Growth ClimateCleanTech
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup DeepJudge is a Zurich-based legal AI company founded in 2021 by AI researchers who met while completing PhDs at ETH Zurich. Its platform provides intent-driven, retrieval-first enterprise search across a law firm's internal document repositories and data sources such as SharePoint, OneDrive and document management systems, enabling permission-respecting access to institutional knowledge before generating AI responses. The product supports multi-document analysis and LLM-powered workflows for legal teams. Reported customers include Freshfields, Holland & Knight, Gunderson Dettmer and Homburger, and the company maintains teams in the United States and Canada.
Startup Series A AILegalTechEnterprise SoftwareB2B SaaS
Lausanne, Switzerland · Startup Distalmotion develops Dexter, a hybrid robotic surgery platform intended to make robotic-assisted minimally invasive procedures more accessible to a broader hospital base. The system allows surgeons to move between robotic and laparoscopic workflows during operations to improve flexibility and operating-room integration.
Startup Growth MedTechRoboticsHealthTech
St. Gallen, Switzerland · Startup Frontify is a brand-building platform headquartered in St. Gallen, Switzerland, founded in 2013 by Roger Dudler. It provides digital asset management, brand guidelines management, templates, AI-assisted tools and analytics, giving teams a central place to create, organise and scale their brands. The platform is used by marketing, design and brand teams to keep brand assets consistent across an organisation. It raised a $50M Series C round led by Revaia in 2021, and also operates offices in New York City and London.
Startup Series C MarTechSaaSB2B SaaSEnterprise Software
Zug, Switzerland · Startup GAIMIN is a Web3 distributed cloud infrastructure platform that uses gamers' unused computing power, including GPUs, for HPC and AI workloads. The company reported more than USD 1.79M in funding, launched the GMRX token, partnered with ecosystems such as Movement Labs and BNB Chain, and secured cloud-compute support from Aethir's ecosystem fund. In decentralized resource and staking markets, it competes with larger platforms such as Lido, Kiln, and Ubitus.
Startup Growth GamingBlockchainWeb3
Lugano, Switzerland · Startup Develops MADE (Microwave Assisted DEpolymerisation), chemical recycling for PET plastics and polyester textiles able to process PET unrecyclable by mechanical methods. Closed a €15.5M Series B to build an industrial-scale microwave PET recycling plant in Spain.
Startup Series B CleanTechGreenTechDeep Tech
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Ledgy is an equity and compensation management software company founded in 2017 in Zurich by three physicists who met at ETH Zurich. Its platform helps companies manage cap tables, employee share and option plans, funding rounds, valuations, compliance and investor relations, positioned as a European equity-management platform for high-growth international startups as well as larger and public companies. The company maintains offices in Zurich and London and reported reaching profitability in 2025.
Startup Series B FintechB2B SaaSEnterprise SoftwareSaaS
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Neon is a Zurich-based digital bank founded in 2018 by Julius Krieg and Jörg Sandrock as one of Switzerland's first challenger banks. Operating on a mobile-first model with no branch network, Neon provides Swiss residents with free everyday banking accounts, a Mastercard debit card, and integrated savings and investment products. The app launched in 2019 and grew to over 200,000 customers, carving out a position in Swiss consumer banking against incumbents like UBS and competing with European neobanks like N26 that do not hold a Swiss banking licence. Neon operates under a banking-as-a-service model through a partnership with Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, which holds the banking licence. It is a benchmark for digital-first financial services built from within Switzerland.
Startup Series B FintechNeobankConsumer Finance
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Zurich-based AI-first enterprise operating system for SMEs and freelancers that automates invoicing, accounting, payroll, and document management in a single platform. Built on ETH and HSG research. Connects all operational processes with AI as the core layer rather than an add-on module.
Startup B2B SaaSAIFintech
Lausanne, Switzerland · Startup Nexthink is a Lausanne-based Digital Employee Experience (DEX) company co-founded in 2004 by Pedro Bados and Patrick Hertzog as an EPFL spin-out. The company built a platform that captures real-time endpoint telemetry from millions of devices, enabling IT teams to diagnose problems proactively, automate remediation, and measure the digital experience of every employee. After two decades of private growth backed by Lightspeed Growth and Permira, Nexthink listed on the Nasdaq in February 2024, becoming one of the most significant Swiss software IPOs in recent memory. The platform is used by over 1,000 enterprise customers including HP, Bank of America, and Nestlé across 190 countries, processing data from more than 15 million endpoints. Nexthink exemplifies the EPFL-to-global-enterprise trajectory that defines Lausanne's software cluster.
Startup Public Enterprise SaaSIT AnalyticsDigital Employee Experience
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Oviva is a digital health company that helps people with weight-related and metabolic conditions, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, and hypertension, improve their health through medical nutritional therapy. Its model combines a medical-device-certified smartphone app with clinical teams of doctors, dietitians, and behavioural specialists, with patients logging meals, activity, and weight while receiving tailored remote support from their dietitian. The company describes itself as Europe's leading digital health provider for weight-related conditions, with care reimbursed as a certified DiGA in Germany, delivered in partnership with the NHS in the UK, and integrated into Swiss public healthcare. It is headquartered in Zurich.
Startup Growth Digital HealthHealthTechSaaS
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Planted is a Zurich-based food technology company founded in 2019 by Christoph Jenny, Pascal Bieri, Eric Stirnemann, and Judith Wemmer as a spin-out from ETH Zurich. The company produces plant-based meat alternatives using a wet extrusion technology that creates fibrous textures closely mimicking animal proteins. Planted's products — planted.chicken, planted.pulled, and planted.kebab — are sold in supermarkets, restaurants, and food service channels across Switzerland, Germany, and neighbouring European markets. The company raised CHF 70 million in a Series B round in 2021 from investors including Vorwerk Ventures and Movendo Capital. Planted is part of the broader ETH Zurich food-tech cluster and is considered one of Europe's most technically sophisticated alternative protein companies, combining deep food science with aggressive consumer distribution.
Startup Series B FoodTechAlternative ProteinSustainability
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Scandit is a Zurich-based enterprise software company founded in 2009 by Samuel Mueller and Christian Floerkemeier as an ETH Zurich spin-out. The company built a computer vision and AI data capture platform that enables enterprises to scan barcodes, QR codes, text, and ID documents using standard smartphone cameras, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware scanners. Scandit's SDK is embedded in apps used by logistics companies, retailers, healthcare providers, and manufacturers to power item scanning for picking, inventory management, and patient safety workflows. The company has raised over $150M from investors including Atomico, G2VP, and Swisscom Ventures, and its technology runs in production at DHL, Sephora, the NHS, and hundreds of other enterprise customers. Scandit operates globally from Zurich with offices in London, Boston, and Tokyo, and is one of Switzerland's most prominent B2B enterprise software scale-ups.
Startup Growth Enterprise SaaSComputer VisionAIRetail Tech
Lausanne, Switzerland · Startup SOPHiA GENETICS is a Lausanne-based health-tech company founded in 2011 by Jurgi Camblong and Pierre Hutter as an EPFL spin-out. The company built a clinical AI platform — SOPHiA DDM — that enables hospital and laboratory networks to decode genomic data for oncology, rare disease, and pharmacogenomics applications. Its platform standardises and accelerates genomic analysis across a federated network of more than 780 healthcare institutions in 70 countries, turning each new clinical dataset into a contribution to a collectively smarter system. SOPHiA GENETICS listed on Nasdaq in July 2021, raising $228M, and is backed by Salesforce Ventures and Generation Investment Management. The company represents the EPFL ecosystem's capacity to produce globally significant clinical technology at scale.
Startup Public BiotechClinical AIGenomicsHealthTech
St. Gallen, Switzerland · Startup Terra Quantum is a St. Gallen-based quantum technology company co-founded in 2019 by Markus Pflitsch to develop quantum-as-a-service algorithms and hybrid quantum-classical computing solutions. The company bridges near-term quantum hardware with practical enterprise use cases in finance, pharma, logistics, and energy by developing quantum algorithms that run on today's noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. Terra Quantum raised a Series A backed by Lakestar and Investcorp and has established research partnerships with academic institutions across Europe. It is one of the few European quantum software companies focused on customer-facing problem-solving rather than hardware development, and a key player in Switzerland's emerging quantum technology ecosystem.
Startup Series A Quantum ComputingDeep TechAI
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Yokoy is a Zurich-based AI-powered spend management platform founded in 2019 by Lars Mangelsdorf, Philippe Sahli, and Michael Fehr. The company automates expense reports, invoice processing, and corporate card management using machine learning, reducing manual finance workflows for mid-market and enterprise clients. Yokoy raised a Series B of CHF 80 million in 2022 led by Sequoia Capital, one of the largest Swiss fintech funding rounds of that year, and has since expanded across DACH, the UK, and the Netherlands. The platform integrates with major ERP systems including SAP and Oracle and is used by companies including DocMorris and Montana. Yokoy competes with Concur and Payhawk in the European spend management category.
Startup Series B FintechSpend ManagementEnterprise SaaSAI
Zurich, Switzerland · Startup Develops Solskin, an AI-controlled adaptive facade combining dynamic photovoltaic panels with automated sun shading. Active solar tracking raises PV output by 40%+, while AI-driven shading cuts building air-conditioning energy by 20–80%.
Startup CleanTechEnergySoft Robotics