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- Global Innovation Index 2025 confirms Switzerland’s leadership in innovation
The Global Innovation Index 2025 reaffirms Switzerland as the world’s top innovation economy, marking yet another year at the forefront of global competitiveness. The report attributes this position to the country’s sustained excellence in R&D investment, sophisticated human capital, and high-value creative and technological outputs. Switzerland also stands out for its strong performance in knowledge commercialization, driven by universities such as EPFL and ETH Zurich, and an ecosystem that effectively links research, industry, and startups.
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Without Science, Innovation Dies
Steve Blank’s latest essay argues that America is dismantling the very foundation of its innovation power by cutting support for science. He explains how basic and applied research—largely conducted in U.S. universities—feeds directly into engineering advances, entrepreneurial breakthroughs, and venture-backed startups. Scientists generate new knowledge, engineers turn discoveries into technology, entrepreneurs test new markets, and VCs scale what works; remove any one of these roles and the innovation system collapses. Blank highlights how decades of federal investment enabled the birth of Silicon Valley, biotech, aerospace, quantum tech, and AI, while cuts in 2025 threaten to shift future breakthroughs to countries still investing heavily, such as China and parts of Europe. His message is clear: weaken science, and the U.S. weakens its economy, security, and ability to lead in the technologies that shape the future.
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ARCHIMED acquires cell line development pioneer ExcellGene
ARCHIMED has acquired a majority stake in ExcellGene and Magellan Biologics, creating an integrated group focused on gene transfer, cell line development, and cell culture–based manufacturing for advanced therapeutics. Founded by Florian and Maria Wurm, the companies bring two decades of expertise in high-performance bioprocessing and have grown revenues by 20% annually since 2017. CEO Maria Wurm and the existing team will continue to lead the group, working with ARCHIMED to expand capabilities in biosimilars, complex recombinant proteins, and next-generation bioprocessing tools.
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$24M to bring chip cooling breakthrough closer to mass production
Swiss startup Corintis has secured USD 24 million to bring its microfluidic chip-cooling breakthrough to mass production, technology shown with Microsoft to remove heat 3× more efficiently than today’s best systems. The Series A, led by BlueYard Capital, boosts total funding to USD 33.4 million and will favor rapid scaling, new hires, and global expansion as Corintis targets one of the biggest bottlenecks in high-performance computing and AI.
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ORYL Photonics secures Series A Investment to scale and grow
Lausanne-based ORYL Photonics has closed its Series A in just two weeks, fueling the commercialization of its new ORYL F1 instrument—an EPFL-born laser light-scattering technology that dramatically improves solubility and aggregation measurements for drug discovery. The funding, alongside a new EU-CH MSCA grant, will support product rollout, service expansion, and scaling, as pharma companies already begin adopting the platform.
- EarlySight raises addition CHF 3.1 million to accelerate growth
EarlySight has added CHF 3.1 million to its Seed round, bringing the total to CHF 6.1 million, with further investment expected. The startup develops ultra-high-precision retinal imaging combined with AI analysis, enabling disease detection up to 18 months earlier than current technologies. The funding will drive the launch of its second-generation product, support global commercial expansion, and advance U.S. regulatory approval. Backed by leading investors including ZKB, EarlySight is already working with top hospitals and pharma partners and has validated its platform with over 18,000 retinal images, positioning the company for accelerated international growth.
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Top100 Swiss Startup Award celebrates 15 years of breakthrough innovation
Switzerland’s most promising young companies took center stage at the 2025 Top100 Swiss Startup Award in Zurich. For the 15th year, a jury of 100 investors and industry experts selected the country’s 100 most innovative, high-potential startups, highlighting Switzerland’s enduring strength in cutting-edge entrepreneurship. Since its inception, the Top100 platform has helped propel Swiss startups onto the global stage, riving visibility, growth, and recognition across the ecosystem.
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Apertus: a fully open, transparent, multilingual language model
EPFL, ETH Zurich and CSCS have released Apertus, a multilingual, fully open-source LLM trained on 15 trillion tokens across more than 1,000 languages. Available via Swisscom and Hugging Face in 8B and 70B parameter versions, Apertus stands out for its radical transparency: its architecture, training data, code, and intermediate checkpoints are all openly documented and accessible. Developed under the Swiss AI Initiative, the model aims to strengthen digital sovereignty and accelerate innovation across research, industry, and society. Built with strict compliance to Swiss and EU regulations, Apertus supports broad commercial and educational use and will debut publicly at the Swiss AI Weeks hackathons. The team plans to expand the model family, improve efficiency, and develop domain-specific versions in fields like law, climate, health, and education, marking the beginning of a long-term commitment to open, trustworthy AI.
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German optics giant acquires Pi imaging Technologies
Carl Zeiss Microscopy has acquired Lausanne-based Pi Imaging Technologies, the startup behind the world’s first SPAD-based camera. Pi Imaging’s single-photon avalanche diode technology—capable of detecting even individual photons—will be integrated into ZEISS’s high-end microscopy systems to boost sensitivity, speed, and imaging quality in low-light environments. The acquisition follows years of collaboration and will enable new advances in fluorescence microscopy, spectroscopy, scientific imaging, and quantum-related applications. Pi Imaging will continue operating from Lausanne with its full team, now contributing its advanced sensor expertise to the ZEISS Group.
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Vista Equity Partners acquires majority in Nexthink in $3 billion deal
Nexthink, the global leader in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management, has announced a definitive agreement for a majority investment from Vista Equity Partners, valuing the company at $3 billion. Serving over 1,500 enterprises and 25 million employees, Nexthink will use the investment to accelerate its next generation of AI-powered, agentic DEX solutions. Founder and CEO Pedro Bados and the leadership team will continue to lead the company as it enters a new phase of growth. With real-time analytics across billions of signals and advanced generative-AI capabilities, Nexthink is reshaping how enterprises detect, resolve, and automate IT issues—driving productivity, engagement, and seamless digital experiences for employees worldwide.
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