Inside the Swiss Deep Tech Report 2026: the pipeline behind the lead

Switzerland now commits a larger share of its venture capital to deep tech than any other country on earth. The Swiss Deep Tech Report 2026, out today, lays out the numbers. But behind them sits a question the report doesn't dwell on: how does world-class research actually turn into companies you can invest in?

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June 17, 2026

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The report is published today by Deep Tech Nation Switzerland, Founderful, Startupticker.ch, Dealroom.co, and us, and launched at VivaTech in Paris. The headline findings are striking: Switzerland directs 63% of all its venture capital into deep tech, ahead of China (56%) and the United States (54%), and invests more per capita than any country in Europe. Funding has grown roughly fivefold since 2015, to a record USD 2.6 billion in 2025. And ETH Zurich and EPFL now rank as Europe's two leading universities for new deep tech spinouts.

That last point is where our story begins.

From research to a company you can back

A great university lab produces papers, patents, and brilliant people. It does not, on its own, produce investable companies. Somewhere between the lecture hall and the cap table, an idea has to be pressure-tested: is there a market, a team that can sell as well as build, a business and not just a breakthrough?

In Switzerland, much of that work happens at Venture Kick. In fact, 57 of the 98 companies featured in this report were supported by Venture Kick. Since 2007, the program has put more than a thousand science-based startups through a structured filter, stage by stage, funding the ones that survive and cutting the ones that don't. Its alumni read like a roll call of Swiss deep tech: Climeworks, Scandit, Distalmotion, AMAL Therapeutics, Kandou. By the time a company clears the final Venture Kick stage, it has been examined more rigorously than almost any other early-stage deal flow in the country.

This is the pipeline that feeds Kickfund. We invest in the startups graduating from Venture Kick's third stage, systematically rather than picking a few favorites. The selection has, in effect, already happened upstream. That's what lets us hold the largest and most diversified deep tech portfolio in Switzerland, more than 100 companies across life sciences, robotics, space, materials, energy, and software.

And the report's most forward-looking claim lands close to home: the strongest growth is still ahead. The seed-to-Series-A cohort moving through the ecosystem right now is the largest Switzerland has ever produced, and it's only just reaching the stage where company value and capital compound most sharply. That cohort is exactly what Venture Kick feeds, and exactly where we invest first.

Built with private money

The report reveals another unusual fact: Switzerland built the world's most deep-tech-focused venture market with almost no public venture capital. In France, Germany, and the UK, much of the late-stage money is state-backed. In Switzerland that scaffolding barely exists, and yet the world's best investors now arrive on their own initiative.

As our CEO Wanja Humanes, a co-author of the report, puts it: "We built one of the world's most deep tech-focused economies without a franc of public venture capital. No public money had to write the cheque to make this real."

There's an open flank, and the report is honest about it: foreign investors now supply 88% of Swiss deep tech funding at the largest rounds, while domestic capital falls to just 12% at late stage. The companies are world-class; the late-stage Swiss money to back them hasn't caught up. For investors willing to come in early, that gap is precisely the opportunity.

Our companies, in the report

The report features companies at every stage, from rising stars to unicorns. We invest right at the start, so you'll find us among the youngest names here, with more to come as this cohort grows up. The featured companies already in our portfolio: