Deep tech start-ups based in Switzerland raised $2.6 billion of new investment last year, new research reveals – more than ever before, and a five-fold increase compared to a decade ago. The Swiss Deep Tech Report 2026 claims the country is now a global leader in the race to develop new solutions and applications in the technologies that are reshaping the international economy.

Notably, no country in the world devotes a higher share of overall technology investment to deep tech. Some 63% of venture capital investment in Switzerland flows into businesses focused on major scientific or engineering challenges – as opposed to, say, consumer applications – which require substantial research, significant capital and extended commercialization timelines, but also offer larger potential returns.

The implication is that Switzerland could ultimately spawn a new generation of global tech giants. Since 2020, for example, the country has seen the launch of 3.5 times’ more venture-backed robotics start-ups per capita than the US and five times’ more than the UK. Switzerland is home to seven times times’ more patents per capita than the European average in what the report describes as the “future of compute” sub-sector.

I covered last year’s version of this report , published by Deep Tech Nation Switzerland, Founderful, Kickfund Startupticker.ch, and Dealroom.co, which charted Switzerland’s emergence as a growing global force in deep tech innovation. Some 12 months later, the country appears to have accelerated further.

“We’ve never seen such a high density of ambitious entrepreneurs tackling globally relevant tech challenges as right now,” says Alex Stöckl, a partner at Founderful and co-author of the report. “The pace at which these founders execute reminds me of what people speak about when they refer to San Francisco. In the coming decade Zurich will become home to at least a dozen global category leaders."

The research identifies Switzerland’s leading universities as a prime driver of the country’s advances, with ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne now Europe's leading academic institutions for new deep tech spinouts. Since 2023, the two universities have seen 24 and 16 spin-outs respectively, ahead of rivals including Oxford, Cambridge and Munich’s Technical University.

Jean-Philippe Fricker, co-founder and chief system architect of Cerebras Systems, the US semiconductor giant, says it is particularly exciting that many of these spin-outs are choosing to remain in the country. “For the first time, the companies spinning out of ETH and EPFL are staying, scaling and attracting serious capital.”

Leading areas of focus for Swiss deep tech companies include artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), robotics, future of compute, climate and energy, medtech and biotech. In particular, AI/ML now accounts for 25% of all start-ups emerging in the country. “Switzerland has developed deep comparative advantages over decades and, with the rise of AI, has found its stride,” says George Robson, a partner at Sequoia Capital.

Certainly, Switzerland already boasts some big-name deep tech companies, from Crispr Therapeutics to Terra Quantum, which have established unicorn-level valuations. But the report’s authors think the best may yet be to come, given the uptick in the number of businesses raising early-stage funding over the past two or three years.

ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne have extended their lead since 2023 in terms of deep tech spin-outs,” adds Stöckl. “But that cohort is only now reaching the seed-to-Series-A window, the stage at which company value and capital raised compound most sharply.”

No wonder that Swiss deep tech businesses continue to catch the eye of international investors. Overseas investors account for 88% of Swiss deep tech funding on rounds of more than $100 million, compared to 75% across Europe broadly. Even on the smallest rounds, of up to $15 million, overseas investors supply 64% of funding in Switzerland, against 44% elsewhere in Europe.