HOST_A: Welcome to Clawd Talks — I'm Emma, joining you from across the pond.
HOST_B: And I'm Ryan, reporting from very rainy Zurich. Well, it's always rainy. That's kind of the deal here.
HOST_A: Today we are doing a deep dive on the Swiss startup scene — specifically what happened in January and February 2026, but really zooming out to look at the full-year 2025 data that just dropped from EY's Startup Barometer.
HOST_B: And there is a lot to unpack. Switzerland had a genuinely remarkable year in 2025. We're talking CHF 3.3 billion raised across the ecosystem — up 44% from CHF 2.3 billion in 2024. That's not a small bump. That's a structural step change.
HOST_A: To put that in global context — when you're looking at a country of 9 million people pulling in 3.3 billion Swiss francs in venture funding, that is extraordinary. Switzerland consistently punches way above its weight class.
HOST_B: And what's interesting is that the deal count barely moved. 515 rounds in 2025 versus 513 in 2024. So you didn't get more deals — you got the same number of deals with vastly more money flowing through them. Which tells you something about where capital is concentrating.
HOST_A: It tells you that investors are writing bigger checks into fewer, more mature companies. The barbell is shifting. More money, same bets.
HOST_B: Right. And actually, five deals alone — the so-called mega-deals above CHF 100 million — accounted for CHF 747 million. So almost a quarter of the entire year's funding came from five rounds. In 2024, there was exactly one deal of that size. One.
HOST_A: That's a dramatic shift. And it raises the question — does that headline number of 3.3 billion actually reflect a broadly healthier ecosystem, or is it being pulled up by five exceptional outliers?
HOST_B: Honestly? Probably a bit of both. But I think you'd be wrong to dismiss it as purely a mega-deal story. The fact that those five mega-deals could happen at all — that Swiss startups are now mature enough to attract rounds of that size — that's a signal. It wasn't possible three or four years ago.
HOST_A: Fair point. Let's look at the sector breakdown, because this is where it gets really interesting. Healthcare is the biggest chunk — CHF 1.5 billion, 44% of all VC money. That's biotech at 818 million, medtech at 369 million, and the care category at 272 million.
HOST_B: Switzerland has always been strong in life sciences. You've got Novartis, Roche, the whole Basel pharma corridor, plus ETH Zurich spinning out biotech companies constantly. That 44% figure is not a surprise — but the scale is impressive.
HOST_A: Second biggest sector: software and analytics, at CHF 924 million — and this one is up 133% year on year. That is not a rounding error. Software literally more than doubled.
HOST_B: And you know what's driving that? AI. Which we need to talk about, because the AI numbers in this report are genuinely wild. AI startups now represent 32% of all funding rounds. In 2023 it was 10%. In 2024 it was 22%. We've gone from one-in-ten deals being AI to nearly one-in-three in two years.
HOST_A: And the money is even more skewed. AI funding tripled — CHF 1.1 billion invested in AI startups in 2025, up 206% from CHF 345 million in 2024. That is a tripling in one year.
HOST_B: So the question I keep asking myself is — is this sustainable? Or are we watching Swiss VCs pile into the AI trade at exactly the wrong moment?
HOST_A: I think there are two things going on here that you have to separate. One is genuine infrastructure and enterprise AI investment — companies building real revenue, real deployments, solving actual problems. The other is narrative-driven AI hype, where the deck has "AI" on slide three and suddenly the valuation doubles.
HOST_B: And from what I can see in the DACH market right now, capital is increasingly discriminating. Enterprise AI is getting funded. Speculative frontier AI narratives — "we're going to build AGI in Zug" — those are getting a much colder reception. The VCs who've been around long enough to have lived through the crypto cycle and the cleantech bubble are more careful.
HOST_A: Which connects to something broader in the DACH context. Right now the capital is concentrating in enterprise AI, sustainability and CSRD compliance software, defense and dual-use tech, industrial robotics, and milestone-driven biotech. What's not getting funded: consumer apps, non-strategic SaaS, and yes, speculative AI plays.
HOST_B: The phrase I keep hearing from Swiss investors is — "capital available for companies with revenue clarity, regulatory tailwinds, and defensible industrial positioning." That is the formula right now. If you can tick all three boxes, you can get funded. If you can't, you're grinding.
HOST_A: Let's talk about the two biggest rounds of January, because they were monster. First up: Terralayr. CHF 177 million. Energy transition company — that was the single largest round in Switzerland in January 2026.
HOST_B: Terralayr is doing integrated energy transition solutions, and they benefited from exactly those regulatory tailwinds we're talking about. EU energy regulation is creating real demand for serious infrastructure plays. When there's a compliance deadline and a big check involved, investors pay attention.
HOST_A: And right behind them — Oviva, CHF 175 million. Digital health, specifically obesity management. This is a company that has been quietly building for years, and they come out with a round almost as big as Terralayr's.
HOST_B: Oviva is a great example of the "boring and brilliant" Swiss startup playbook. They're not trying to reinvent the universe. They identified a specific clinical need — chronic disease management, particularly weight and metabolic health — built a regulated digital therapy platform, got reimbursement in multiple markets, and then scaled. That's the path.
HOST_A: And obesity is suddenly a very hot category globally, given the GLP-1 drug wave — Ozempic, Wegovy, all of that. Digital health platforms that can wrap around and complement pharmacological treatment are in serious demand.
HOST_B: Also worth mentioning: enshift raised 18.5 million euros in February — integrated energy-transition solutions again, also riding the EU regulatory wave. Not as massive as Terralayr, but for an early-stage company, that's a strong round.
HOST_A: Now let's address the elephant in the room — or more accurately, the deflating elephant. The energy sector overall was down 55% in 2025. Energy funding more than halved. And yet Terralayr raised CHF 177 million in January.
HOST_B: This is the paradox that I find really interesting. On an aggregate level, energy is getting crushed. But within energy, the companies that have very specific positioning around transition infrastructure and regulatory compliance are still getting large rounds. So the "energy is dead" narrative is too crude.
HOST_A: What's dying is the speculative cleantech model — the "we'll figure out the revenue model later" approach that dominated 2021 and 2022. What's surviving is very targeted, policy-aligned energy infrastructure. Different animal entirely.
HOST_B: It also reflects a maturation of investor thinking after the cleantech bubble of the early 2010s. Swiss VCs who backed ambitious solar and wind plays back then and got burned are now demanding a much clearer path to commercial revenue before they write the check.
HOST_A: Let's pivot to AI for a second longer, because I want to give a more nuanced take. The Zug Crypto Valley is an interesting case study here. It built its reputation on blockchain and crypto, and now it's actively rebranding — quietly, subtly — into a broader innovation hub with AI companies setting up.
HOST_B: I've seen this happening in real time. The infrastructure is there — low corporate tax, English-friendly environment, great rail connections to Zurich, proximity to ETH. The branding is shifting from "Crypto Valley" to something more like "Innovation Valley." It's not a marketing campaign, it's just the organic evolution of who's setting up offices there.
HOST_A: And the talent pipeline is the piece that I think gets underrated in global coverage of Switzerland. ETH Zurich, EPFL in Lausanne, the university system broadly — Switzerland has 10 universities feeding engineers and researchers into the startup ecosystem. When you have that kind of output pipeline in a small country, you get outsized results.
HOST_B: Although — and this is the structural tension that Switzerland still hasn't solved — Swiss startups are brilliant at seed and Series A. But when it comes to Series B and beyond, a lot of them are going to US or UK funds. The domestic growth capital just isn't there at the scale needed for a company that wants to raise 80, 100, 150 million francs.
HOST_A: Which is why those five mega-deals in 2025 often involved international co-investors. It's not that Swiss VCs stepped up — it's that the Swiss companies got good enough that American and British funds started flying to Zurich to write the checks.
HOST_B: That's a subtle but important distinction. The money is coming in from outside, which is great for Swiss startups, but it does mean the ecosystem is still dependent on external capital at the growth stage.
HOST_A: Now let's look at February, because there's a different story to tell there. The funding numbers were way down — 72% drop in CHF amounts from January. But January had two 175-million-plus rounds, so that's a completely expected normalisation.
HOST_B: What's more interesting in February is the company formation data. 4,968 new companies registered in Switzerland in February 2026 — that's up 12.8% from January and up 3.2% from February 2025. New entity creation is genuinely picking up.
HOST_A: And the regional breakdown is fascinating. Zurich showed the strongest growth — 973 new companies, up 22.2% month on month. That is remarkable. Zurich is clearly accelerating.
HOST_B: French-speaking Switzerland — the Romande, Geneva, Lausanne corridor — is still the most active region overall, with 1,390 new companies. But Zurich closing the gap, and doing it this fast, is a real shift.
HOST_A: Northwestern Switzerland — Basel corridor — up 18.7%. And Zug at 286 new companies, still dominant for its size. Zug has maybe 30,000 people. 286 new companies in one month is absurd for a canton that size.
HOST_B: It reflects the Zug tax and regulatory setup — very attractive for holding companies, for crypto entities, for anything that wants a Swiss address but doesn't need a lot of local employees. The formation numbers include entities that won't necessarily have Zug-based operations, but the signal is still real.
HOST_A: So what does all of this mean if you're a software engineer in Zurich thinking about starting something? What's the actionable read?
HOST_B: I think there are four things I'd take away. First: AI is not a magic word anymore, but it is a requirement. If you're building enterprise software and you don't have a credible AI story, investors will ask why. AI is table stakes in 2026, not a differentiator on its own.
HOST_A: Second: regulatory tailwinds are your friend. CSRD compliance software. EU AI Act tooling. Healthcare interoperability. If there's a regulation creating pain for large enterprises, and you can solve it with software, that's a business model that investors understand right now.
HOST_B: Third: if you're in deep tech or biotech, Switzerland is an extraordinarily good place to start. The talent, the ETH proximity, the government support mechanisms — it's hard to replicate that. But if you're building a consumer app or a B2C play, the Swiss market is tiny and the funding environment is cold. You'd probably be better off starting in London or Berlin where the consumer market and the consumer investor base are bigger.
HOST_A: And fourth — and this is the one I always want people to think about — plan your funding journey internationally from day one. Don't assume Swiss VCs will carry you through to exit. Build relationships with London, New York, San Francisco. The Series A might come from Zurich; the Series B almost certainly won't.
HOST_B: That's the honest reality of the ecosystem. It's world-class for early stage. It's still dependent on international capital for scale.
HOST_A: Let's do a quick round of "what to watch" going into Q2 and the rest of 2026.
HOST_B: Defense and dual-use tech. I know it's uncomfortable for some Swiss founders to think about, given the neutrality tradition, but the EIB and KfW are increasingly co-investing in this space, and the dual-use tag is getting attached to everything from drone software to satellite comms to industrial AI. If you're in that space, the capital environment is getting more favorable.
HOST_A: CSRD and sustainability compliance software. Every large European company has a reporting deadline bearing down on them and most of them are scrambling. The software layer on top of sustainability regulation is underfunded relative to the problem size. Big opportunity.
HOST_B: Watch what happens with the biotech cohort from ETH and EPFL this year. The EY data shows biotech at 818 million in 2025 — but there are a bunch of spinouts from the last two or three years that are approaching Series A and B moments. The next wave of Swiss biotech is coming.
HOST_A: And keep an eye on Zurich's AI cluster specifically. There are a handful of enterprise AI companies that have been relatively quiet that I expect to announce significant rounds in the next six months. Zurich is becoming a genuine European AI hub — not just ETH research, but commercial companies.
HOST_B: One more thing — the gender diversity data. 23% of funded startups had at least one female co-founder, 6% were entirely women-founded. Those numbers are improving, but they're still low. And there's genuine evidence that diverse founding teams produce better outcomes. This is both a values issue and a returns issue, and I think Swiss VCs know it.
HOST_A: Alright, let's bring it home. 2025 was a breakout year for Swiss startups — CHF 3.3 billion, 44% growth, AI funding tripling, five mega-deals that would have been impossible just a few years ago. January 2026 started with two monster rounds from Terralayr and Oviva. February showed company formation accelerating, especially in Zurich. The macro environment rewards founders with clear revenue models, regulatory tailwinds, and industrial-grade positioning.
HOST_B: Switzerland is not the flashiest startup ecosystem in the world. It doesn't have Berlin's countercultural energy or London's financial depth. But it has something arguably more durable — a world-class technical university, political stability, a culture of precision and execution, and proximity to the EU without having to deal with all of the EU's bureaucratic overhead.
HOST_A: If you're building something serious — something technically hard, something with a real enterprise customer, something where precision matters — Switzerland remains one of the best places in the world to start it. And the numbers are finally catching up with the quality of what's being built here.
HOST_B: That's the Swiss startup story in early 2026. Thanks for listening to Clawd Talks — we'll be back next week with more from the European tech scene. Until then, if you're in Zurich — go enjoy the lake. Even if it's raining.
HOST_A: It's always raining.
HOST_B: It's always raining.