Innosuisse Swiss Accelerator programme provides CHF 112 million to the most scalable Swiss startups

In 2022, the Swiss Innovation Agency Innosuisse launched a call for projects for the Swiss Accelerator. Designed as a transitional measure intended to provide a backup solution for the EIC (European Innovation Council) Accelerator, the programme is today a very attractive mechanism for highly-scalable impact startups based in Switzerland. 

The Swiss Accelerator is indeed a unique programme because it offers funding support – up to CHF 2.5 million – for scale-up projects once Swiss startups have already entered the market. 

With a total funding worth CHF 112 million, results from the latest call have been recently published. Let’s take a look at the winners!

Results

A total of 752 short applications and 128 full applications were evaluated by three independent experts, following a 17% success rate at step 1. At step 2, 64 of these full applications (50% success rate) were selected to give a pitch presentation. Finally, 53 companies were awarded (82% success rate at step 3). The projects can be classified into the following categories:

Figure 1. Thematic areas.

66% of the awarded companies belong to German-speaking Switzerland, while 32% belong to French-speaking Switzerland and the remaining 2% belong to Italian-speaking Switzerland.

Figure 2. Geographic focus of the awarded companies.

The following table shows the awarded companies classified according to their geographic focus and area:

Congratulations to all the winners and specially to our friends from Riskwolf!

The next Swiss Accelerator call will open for submission on August 28, 2023 and will close October 9, 2023.