Why Switzerland for innovative AI

Since December 2024, two AI heavyweights, OpenAI and Anthropic, have had a presence in Zurich. They join an illustrious circle of US tech companies, some of which have been researching AI in Switzerland for decades, such as Google, IBM, Apple and Nvidia. They take over Swiss start-ups repeatedly; most recently, Nvidia acquired a company that focuses on Character AI.

US VCs also have a strong presence in Switzerland and it’s striking that in recent years the top VCs, including Khosla, General Catalyst, Kindred, Accel, GV and Dropbox Ventures, have developed a preference for Swiss AI start-ups. Accel invested in no-code platform Viso, and Khosla in digital health start-up Aktiia. General Catalyst partnered with Index Ventures to finance EthonAI, a pioneering company in AI-powered manufacturing analytics. Lakera, which aims to lead the real-time GenAI application security category, attracted Dropbox Ventures and Atomico as investors.

These examples illustrate the high number of innovative AI companies, the diversity of their fields of activity and the large talent pool in Switzerland. In addition, the high number of investments from top US VCs shows that Swiss founders not only bring first-class expertise, but also the right mindset for building global category leaders.

Data-based insights research

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Leading global research location

AI research has a decades-long tradition in Switzerland. The Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA USI-SUPSI) in southern Switzerland was founded in 1988. Since 2017, research has intensified significantly, with the number of research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation more than quadrupling between 2017 and 2022, from 30 to over 120 per year. According to the Global AI Index, this puts Switzerland among the top five countries in terms of AI research.

Organisational innovations give research even more clout. In autumn 2024, ETH Zurich and EPFL launched the Swiss National AI Institute (SNAI) to provide a national perspective on AI-based research, education and innovation. SNAI will accelerate the momentum of the Swiss AI Initiative and spearhead research on large-scale AI, enabled by the ‘Alps’ supercomputer with more than 10,000 of the latest generation AI superchips (Graphics Processing Units, or GPUs). Leveraging its integration with the ETH AI Center and the EPFL AI Center, the new institute benefits from the expertise of more than 70 AI-focused professors across Switzerland.

Hundreds of deep tech start-ups

According to several recent studies, the number of Swiss AI start-ups is high and growing. An analysis for the study ‘Generate AI-mpact’ by Swiss think-tank W.I.R.E. enumerated 700 AI start-ups. Using a slightly broader definition, Swiss Startup Radar came up with a total of 1,000 companies, including some older companies such as the unicorn Scandit, which focuses on AI-powered smart data capture software. However, the real wave of start-ups began only in 2016. Since then, between 60 and 80 new AI start-ups have been launched every year, most of these with deep tech innovations.

More than 100 start-ups are developing solutions in the ‘generate and create’ group, and even more companies can be found in the classic AI fields. The ‘predict and recommend’ group comprises more than 300 companies, and 200 companies each are active in the ‘classify and understand’ and ‘optimise, control and connect’ areas.

In terms of number of start-ups, Switzerland is one of the leading nations in Europe, just behind the much larger countries of the UK, France and Germany. The same applies to investment: according to the AI Europe Report 2024 by Dealroom and Roosh, more than USD 2 billion was invested in Switzerland between 2020 and 2024, putting the country in fourth place in Europe, behind the UK, Germany and France.

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Starting advantage thanks to strong home market

In the EY European AI Barometer 2024, Switzerland emerged as an AI success story: the study found widespread financial gains in companies through the use of AI, a positive employee mindset and comparatively low levels of concern about job losses. The study concluded that Switzerland is leading the AI transformation

This leading role opens up various opportunities for start-ups, with many of them able to gain existing companies as partners or customers. At the end of 2024, the Swiss stock exchange operator SIX introduced Unique’s AI platform FinanceGPT for more than 4,000 employees. Netguardians’ AI-driven anti-fraud solutions are currently used by 60% of Swiss state-owned commercial banks. And the Mikron Group, a globally successful Swiss mechanical engineering company, has acquired start-up LYSR’s software platform, which enables manufacturing industries to take advantage of AI-powered process monitoring without the need to code.

The opportunity to work with strong Swiss companies has led AI start-ups to focus on the most important Swiss industries. The largest group of start-ups develop solutions for the life sciences, fintech and insurtech companies follow in second place, and Industry 4.0 companies take third place. More than 100 AI start-ups are active in each of these sectors.


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