For every ingenious technological invention we have, there are endless ideas waiting to be made just as real. A paper-thin touch screen you can fold and pocket away. Headphones you can charge in just one minute. A wound dressing that sends the nurse an alert in case of inflammation. A favorite toy that never gets lost again on the way to the playground. A shipping label that transmits real-time data on temperature fluctuations and physical shocks throughout its journey across the globe. A tiny interstellar probe powered with nothing but solar sails.

Our lives are becoming both more mobile and more connected. We want to roam freely in this world and beyond, and we want to transmit and consume data as we go. This means we need a constant, untethered power source; a light, flexible, durable, and fast-charging battery.

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Cleaner environment, cleaner conscience

Moritz Futscher and Abdessalem “Abi” Aribia are developing such a battery. Moritz is the CEO and Abi the CTO of BTRY, a startup that – according to Moritz – wants to “build the energy storage for an interconnected and portable future”. The two founders have created a flexible, paper-like battery thinner than a human hair. As ions have a smaller distance to travel in such a slim storage space, charging and discharging times are short: while other battery units take ten minutes for a full charge, BTRY’s cell gets there in just one minute. The slim BTRY units can power radically thin and flexible devices, or they can be stacked to create exceptionally high-capacity energy sources.

The BTRY unit is a materials science feat: as a solid-state cell, it contains no liquids. In a battery, liquids are trouble: they tend to leak, freeze, and burn under not-so-extreme conditions. In contrast, the BTRY fuel cell operates safely in temperatures up to +150 and down to -40 degrees Celsius. The BTRY batteries are more sustainable due to their longer lifetimes and the fact that their manufacturing process relies on electricity rather than toxic solvents. The units even use much less cobalt than typical batteries, which makes them cleaner from an ethical and supply chain perspective.

The idea for BTRY was born at Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, where Moritz and Abi shared a research project and an office. After some industrial collaborations, the two academics received requests to perform feasibility studies. Moritz and Abi understood that their work could be turned into a successful industrial product,  but their academic environment offered no incentives or an easy way for bringing a technology into the market.

The two friends were at a crossroads. On the one hand, they basked in promising industry traction and were encouraged to try their wings at founding a company. Yet at the same time, Moritz was offered a position as a group leader, which would be a nice step up the scientific career ladder. Moritz and Abi took the path that was more likely to bring their technology into the real world, to be used by real people. They chose the company, and the insecurity that comes with entrepreneurship.

Luckily the founders didn’t have to make the jump completely alone: glatec, a business incubator at Empa, helped the greenhorns get started. Soon the young entrepreneurs were also accepted into the European Space Agency’s Swiss Business Incubator Center, ESA BIC; their technology could power space missions, because it works well in vacuum and survives long dormant periods. To qualify for the ESA BIC program, they just had to incorporate the company: alas, BTRY was founded in 2023. The company then went through Venture Kick and joined the Kickfund portfolio in 2024.

Today, the BTRY team includes 12 people, and they are hiring their first overseas colleagues in the United States. BTRY already had a successful pre-seed round in 2024, and they expect to close their seed round soon. This financial injection will give BTRY a two-year runway to scale up and meet the intense customer demands. First commercial applications include smart product labels for logistics, and many more will follow.

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Relearning communication, redefining success

Turning from an academic researcher into a deep-tech company founder might sound like a natural transition to an outsider, but Moritz and Abi assure it has been a massive mindset shift. “All our lives we’ve been trained to be good scientists, yet now we’ve become managers”, Abi summarizes. Success in academia is well defined and more individual, Moritz explains. But when you lead a company, success no longer belongs to you; it’s something your team achieves.

Moritz and Abi had to learn many new skills, including a new way of communicating. Instead of using academically accurate language to asymptotically approach pure facts, they now have to inspire investors, convince customers, and energize employees with visions of the future. The scientist in Moritz hesitated before agreeing to hire a commercial expert for BTRY. Now seeing their impact, the CEO admits his company needs even more of those skills.

The two founders no longer do hands-on research; instead, they need to know how to enable others and avoid becoming a roadblock. Abi describes how in academia they could always use the cheat code of simply working more: staying in after hours and crunching through weekends to get things done. But just throwing more hours at a problem won’t solve the kinds of challenges a business and an employer faces. Such habits are also not sustainable: Moritz and Abi need to maintain their personal energy levels and keep their minds focused on the strategy.

Like creator, like creation: just as a leader is nothing without their people, a battery does nothing without the invention it powers. It takes humility to develop a technology that will stand and fall with the ideas and applications of others. Moritz and Abi emphasize the need for listening and building networks: a young component maker in Switzerland will not have all the ideas it takes to build a better world, so they need an open mind to connect with those they can power forward.

A better battery in a connected, electrified world will have use cases across the spectrum. Much has changed in the lives of Moritz and Abi, but the core remains: the two are really excited about crossing boundaries, about pushing the envelope, about making new things possible through technology. They might have to reinvent their professional identities, relearn their languages, and redefine their reward systems, but they can stay true to their passion.

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BTRY is one of the rising companies mentioned in the Swiss Deep Tech Report 2025. Read more about the report here.

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