Top100 Swiss Startup Award 2026: Corintis Repeats
Corintis won the Top100 Swiss Startup Award for the second year in a row, with legal AI company DeepJudge second and space startup PAVE Space third. Six new special awards went to a newcomer, a biotech, a cleantech, a robotics company, the year's biggest raise and its biggest exit.
Zurich handed out the sixteenth Top100 Swiss Startup Award on Wednesday night at Theater 11. A jury of 100 investors and startup experts built the list. Each juror named ten companies under five years old, and the points were added up. The room leaned hard toward deep tech: chips, spacecraft, robots and drugs.
The Winner
Corintis [Hardware] took the top spot for the second year running. The EPFL spin-off builds cooling that works inside the chip itself. Liquid moves through tiny channels cut into the silicon, some of them ten times finer than a human hair. The method cools about three times better than standard approaches, which matters because cooling eats roughly 30 percent of the power a data center draws. CEO Remco van Erp, COO Sam Harrison and EPFL professor Elison Matioli founded the Lausanne company. It raised a $24 million Series A in September 2025 and added about $25 million more in December.
The Rest of the Podium
DeepJudge [LegalTech] finished second. The Zurich company builds search and document analysis for law firms, so lawyers can find what they need across decades of case files. Three ETH Zurich PhDs founded it in 2021, all former Google researchers: CEO Paulina Grnarova, CTO Yannic Kilcher and COO Kevin Roth. Freshfields, Holland & Knight and Gunderson Dettmer are among its customers. It raised a $41.2 million Series A led by Felicis in November 2025.
PAVE Space [Robotics / Hardware] finished third in its first year on the list. The Villeneuve company builds a kick stage that carries satellites from a rocket's drop-off point to their final orbit in under 24 hours. CEO Julie Böhning, CTO Jérémy Marciacq and Simon Both founded it in 2024, and all three came out of EPFL's Gruyère Space Program. They have signed eight reservation agreements with satellite operators and manufacturers, and raised a $40 million seed round in March.
Special Awards
Dexterous Endoscopes [Healthtech] won best newcomer in the ranking. CEO Yegor Piskarev and CTO Yi Sun spun the company out of EPFL's Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. Their endoscopes change stiffness as they move through the body, starting with a scope for ear, nose and throat surgery. The company has raised over CHF 1 million and finished seven rounds of preclinical trials.
Aukera Therapeutics [Biotech] was named best-ranked biotech. CEO Stefan Imseng co-founded the Basel company out of the Biozentrum at the University of Basel. It develops drugs that target the mTORC1 pathway, which controls how cells grow.
Voltiris [Cleantech] took best-ranked cleantech. CEO Nicolas Weber, CTO Jonas Roch and CPO Dominik Blaser founded the Lausanne company in 2021. It sells solar filters to greenhouse growers as a service, so the same roof grows plants and makes power.
Flexion Robotics [Robotics / Hardware] won best-ranked robotics. The Zurich company writes the software layer that lets humanoid robots move on their own. Five people founded it: CEO Nikita Rudin, CTO David Höller, ETH Zurich robotics professor Marco Hutter, Julian Nubert and Fabian Tischhauser. It raised a $50 million Series A in November 2025 with backing from Nvidia's venture arm.
Kandou [Hardware] was recognized for the largest financing round of the year, a $225 million raise announced in March. Amin Shokrollahi founded the chip interconnect company out of EPFL in 2011 and now serves as CTO, with Srujan Linga as CEO.
Memo Therapeutics [Biotech] was recognized for the largest exit. Christoph Esslinger founded the Schlieren company in 2012 to find antibodies against viral infections and cancer, and its lead drug targets a virus that attacks kidneys in transplant patients. Ipsen closed its purchase in July for EUR 200 million up front, with milestones that could push the total past EUR 700 million. Erik van den Berg has run the company as CEO since late 2023.
Why It Matters for the UpNext Network
Four of the nine companies honored this year build physical things: cooling hardware, medical scopes, greenhouse filters and spacecraft. Swiss deep tech keeps producing teams that need labs and factories, and Swiss investors keep writing checks big enough to pay for them. Since 2011 the Top100 has recognized 677 startups that raised CHF 19 billion, created more than 27,000 jobs and produced 11 unicorns.
