The Swiss tech ecosystem urgently needs corporate and government clients - and investors will follow!
Switzerland shamefully depends on foreign growth capital
The brand new Swiss Venture Capital Report 2025 makes for interesting reading, particularly about later-stage funding in Switzerland.[1] As in previous years, early-stage funding is growing (gently), but the report laments the lack of later-stage funding in Switzerland and highlights that later-stage funding of Swiss tech companies is mostly provided by foreign investors.
"The majority of top 20 largest growth rounds without any Swiss investor."[2]
In addition, later-stage scaling of startups happens abroad (often in the U.S., as my upcoming Swiss AI Book will show).[3]
Why is wealthy Switzerland relying on foreign investors to support its world-leading tech companies?
What is wrong with Switzerland's tech ecosystem? Are investors to blame - or someone else? Here is what I have observed over many years of working with Swiss and global scale-ups.
Switzerland lacks the market potential for scaling tech companies.
It is the lack of market potential that hampers Switzerland's tech ecosystem growth. And it is very bad news for Switzerland for multiple reasons.
First, innovative founders are forced to go abroad, which is costly and risky. Second, the largest financial outcomes often goes to foreign investors. Lastly, the Swiss economy does not profit from innovative Swiss tech. This results from the lack of large domestic buyers from corporations to the government.
Often, the lack of later-stage funding is blamed on risk-averse Swiss institutional investors, such as pension funds. In my view, this missing the point.
Let me explain.
No outsized returns in Switzerland
Investors are single-minded creatures. They strongly care about financial returns or return potential (aka "track record"). Simply put, investors look at past returns and hope that similar returns will occur in the future. This is what they base their investment decisions on.
In Switzerland, large financial outcomes, such as listing on the New York Stock Exchange for Tesla, Uber, and Coinbase, and Apple, are just missing. We also lack a strong track record for later-stage funders. This is why investors do not want to invest in later-stage rounds. They are purely driven by return potential.
The absence of outsized outcomes for investors results from the limited potential of the Swiss market. As a market, Switzerland is simply too small to enable a company to scale successfully.
In a recent presentation, Anybotics' CFO, Frederik Isler, made exactly this point. When asked about the biggest markets, he mentioned the U.S., the Middle East, and the Nordics. Switzerland only makes up five percent of their client base—that is shocking!
It looks like big Swiss companies do not want to buy Swiss tech. This results in a limited market potential for Swiss tech companies.
It gets even worse. Even the Swiss government does not want to buy Swiss tech!
The Swiss government refuses to buy Swiss Tech
In a recent article, journalist Thomas Schwendener highlighted this problem.[4]
Since 2024, the Swiss federal government has spent USD 3.7 billion on U.S. technology from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others.
Instead of buying from local Swiss tech providers the Swiss government supports foreign tech, hampering the Swiss tech ecosystem's growth. This is absolutely shocking!
Given the scary developments in U.S. tech, where all the founders are bending their knees to President Trump and his best buddy Elon Musk, buying Swiss tech is of national security interest!
By not buying from Swiss tech companies, big and small, the Swiss government has created a severe dependence on foreign tech and its erratic founders.
This is really, really scary!
Swiss product skills are missing
There is a second-order problem coming from Swiss tech companies going abroad to scale: the lack of scaling and product expertise in Switzerland.
In my many interviews for my upcoming Swiss AI Book, I learned that Swiss founders go abroad to find skilled staff for business development, sales, and product management.
The reason is simple: very few people in Switzerland have worked in large and successful tech companies.
As a result, no one knows how to scale properly. This is in stark contrast to the U.S., where a large workforce has worked for major tech companies.
Having talked to dozens of small to large tech companies in Switzerland and abroad, I learned one simple thing:
In tech, it all starts with the product roadmap.
A product roadmap is tied to a business plan. It binds a tech company, from engineering to sales, together. It is the leadership's tool for discussing market potential, target clients, and where to allocate resources.
It is a vital foundation of any successful tech company (and it is never finished).
Besides corporate and government clients, the Swiss tech ecosystem needs more product management and product lifecycle skills. Shockingly, for such a vital skill, it is hardly ever discussed at startup and innovation events. I hardly come across product officers in Switzerland. They just do not exist.
If Switzerland wants to grow its homegrown tech ecosystem from AI to drones and from SaaS to cleantech, it desperately requires two things:
1. Swiss corporations and governments buying Swiss tech
2. Build out its product skills and talents
If Switzerland does those two things, investors and growth capital will follow. Financing will follow commercial success.
This is for sure. Promised.
[1] https://www.startupticker.ch/en/swiss-venture-capital-report
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/duebendorfer_surprising-facts-for-venture-capital-investments-activity-7292464842056056832-bMa-?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAAVXDQBN8gXedRraJUAgRsbSd7dH_5v4hE
https://www.swissaibook.com
[4] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/thomas-schwendener-245459131_bund-beschaffungen-simap-activity-7297973790116872194-kiX7?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAAVXDQBN8gXedRraJUAgRsbSd7dH_5v4hE