Switzerland hits peak deep tech investment levels

The Swiss Deep Tech Report 2026 found that 63% of Swiss venture capital is directed to deep tech. The country invested $1,470 per capita in 2025, which for a population of 9.1m equates to over $13bn. Using this per capita metric, Switzerland  is third after Israel and the USA. The US, of course has a larger population (341.8m) and, according to Celesta Capital, spent a  record $179bn on deep tech investment in 2025. The per capita rate for Switzerland was also nearly double that of Germany and the UK, said the report.

The report, compiled by Deep Tech Nation Switzerland, Founderful, Kickfund, Startupticker.ch, and Dealroom.co also finds that Swiss universities, ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne ahead in Europe in terms of deep tech spinouts.  Since 2020, there have been 192 alumni-founded European deep tech startups from ETH Zurich and 94 from EPFL, compared to 67 from the UK’s Cambridge University and 35 from MIT in the US in the same period.

“For the first time, the companies spinning out of ETH and EPFL are staying, scaling and attracting serious capital,” says Jean-Philippe Fricker, co-founder and chief system architect of Cerebras Systems, the California-based AI training and inference company.

Areas attracting investment in Switzerland are AI and ML, making up 25% of newly founded deep tech companies. The country has the highest density of AI researchers, said the report, at double the number in the UK and the US.

There are also  x3.5 more venture backed robotics startups per capita created than in the US since 2020.

Switzerland also tops the European league for patents per capita, with seven times the European average. The main areas of interest are microelectronics and high-precision sensors, added the report.

The report was launched at VivaTech, a annual startup and tech innovation event in Paris (17-20 June).

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