Swiss startup competition program >>venture>> has announced the semi-finalists for this year’s competition, unveiling the 60 startups the Round 1 jurors selected from a record-breaking 451 submissions.

These 60 teams represent six verticals – Consumer Solutions, Industrials and Engineering, Medtech and Healthcare, Pharma and Biotech, Social and Environmental Impact, and Business and Finance – and were selected for proposing the most innovative business idea across these categories.

The 10 Business and Finance Semi-Finalists

In the Business and Finance categories, the ten selected companies span artificial intelligence (AI) agents, regtech, alternative financing, and cybersecurity. These businesses and solutions are:

• AmelioRatio builds self-improving software using AI agents, enabling companies to integrate AI into their products with the best possible performance;
• ConFlip helps employees and organizations resolve workplace conflicts and integrity violations through a confidential, AI-guided support platform;
• Do Me A Favour Buddy (DMAFB) is a digital wellbeing app that can predict employee burnout a week in advance, giving companies evidence-based prevention alerts and intervention tools to reduce turnover costs;
• Link Genetic builds infrastructure for persistent links, preventing broken references and content drift across documents, websites, and AI systems;
• NativeAI Guard is a security layer for AI usage that sits between an organization and external AI models, protecting sensitive data, enforcing policies, and monitoring activity to prevent misuse or leaks;
• Navi is an AI-powered hiring platform that automates candidate screening through interviews and role simulations to help companies shortlist top talent before human interviews;
• RegCheck is a platform that orchestrates an organization’s entire compliance process, learns from every review, and gets smarter with every file;
• reilo is climate-fintech company that enables smallholder farmers to access microloans by using “biodiversity” as collateral, creating returns for investors while incentivizing forest conservation;
• Surelio.ai is an AI audit and security company that tests and certifies AI systems to ensure they are safe, reliable, and behave as intended in real-world use; and
• UAC Labs pioneers the Coordination State Machine, which enables “Unified Finance”, a financial architecture where cross-border payments, foreign exchange, and collateral movements are orchestrated with the same consistency guarantees across traditional finance, centralized finance, and decentralized finance.

Competition timeline

These 10 semi-finalists, along with the 50 others, will now receive mentorship from experts representing organizations like Innosuisse, Thomson Reuters, Rothschild and Co Bank, Swiss Life Group, and Novartis Venture Fund. Starting May 2026, they will attend pitch training sessions with investors and McKinsey and Company leaders. These experts will help them refine their pitches and prepare for the next stage competition.

Eventually, the 60 semi-finalists will present their idea to an industry-specific jury consisting of seasoned investors and entrepreneurs. Jurors will select a total of 18 finalists consisting of three per vertical, to advance into the final round.

On June 15, 2026, the final pitch and award ceremony will see these finalists face industry experts from the  >>venture>> Advisory Board, who will crown one winner in each of the six verticals. Each vertical winner will take home CHF 50,000 (US$64,000) plus a McKinsey and Company consulting package. The other finalists will earn CHF 10,000 each.

The six winners will then go head-to-head for the ultimate prize of an extra CHF 100,000, and be crowned the 2026 >>venture>> Grand Prize winner.

The audience present at the ceremony will also vote for their favorite startup. This winner will take home the CHF 10,000 Audience Award prize.

2026 Spotlight Award competition

The Board will select the CHF 50,000 Spotlight Award winner. The Spotlight Award is a special recognition that shines a light on innovation, creativity, and impact beyond the traditional competition categories.

Each year, this award highlights a new theme, celebrating ventures that dare to push boundaries. This year’s theme is Apertus, Switzerland’s new open source large language model (LLM) launched by ETH Zurich, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). The award will recognize the most creative, high-impact application of Apertus within a Swiss startup.

>>venture>> program background

Founded in 1997, >>venture>> is a leading competition for up-and-coming entrepreneurs in Switzerland. A joint initiative of ETH Zurich, McKinsey and Company, Knecht Holding, Innosuisse and EPFL, the competition is open to individuals and teams at all stages of development.

Every startup team needs to have a minimum of one person 18 years of age or older and one person who is a resident of Switzerland. Applicants must submit a ten to 20-page document detailing their business idea.

Selected teams benefit from workshops, feedback from a panel of around 90 experts, and connections across Switzerland’s startup ecosystem. The competition also offers substantial cash prizes, expert mentorship, business consulting, networking with investors and industry leaders, and extensive media exposure.

Since its inception, >>venture>> alumni have successfully founded over 1,500 companies and create more than 15,000 jobs in Switzerland. Notable winners include Kaspar&, an investment app acquired in February 2026 by Liberty Vorsorge; Stableton Financial, an institutional investment platform focused on private blue-chip technology companies; and Frigg, an operating system for renewable energy finance.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Switzerland, based on image by muhammad.abdullah via Freepik