Swiss start-ups boosted by investment in AI
Swiss start-ups recorded a financing volume of CHF3.3 billion ($4.25 billion) in 2025, an increase of 44% over one year. More than three out of ten rounds of funding went to artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups.
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Swiss start-ups boosted by investment in AI
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
Between January and the end of December, 515 rounds of financing for start-ups took place in Switzerland, representing an increase of 0.4%, according to the EY barometer published on Tuesday.
In detail, the highest number of financing rounds was recorded in canton Zurich (213), followed by French-speaking Switzerland (165), Central Switzerland (56) and North-Western Switzerland (27). Next came the Central Plateau with 25 rounds, canton Ticino with 20 rounds and Eastern Switzerland with nine rounds.
“By international comparison, Switzerland recorded the biggest increase in volume. Germany saw a 19% increase, while Austria saw a 56% drop,” said the authors of the study.
In terms of volume, the health sector came out on top. However, EY notes an “undeniable advance” in start-ups integrating AI into their core business. In 2025, there were 163 of them, up 46% year-on-year. Investment in these companies jumped by 206% to CHF1.1 billion.
+ Dozens of countries call for ‘safe, reliable and robust AI’
What’s more, 23% of the start-ups that received funding last year had female members of their founding team. In 6% of cases, the founding team was made up exclusively of women, a lower proportion than in 2024.
Join the debate:
External Content
Adapted from French by AI/ts
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
External Content
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.