Switzerland boasts a vibrant investment ecosystem supported by a robust network of investors and venture capitalists (VCs). A database created and maintained by The Week in Swiss Startups, in collaboration with swissVC and Swisspreneur, reveals that the market now comprises a total of 127 investors supporting the tech startups in Switzerland and beyond, among which 22 fintech investors.
The database, which relies on publicly available information sourced from official websites, startup platforms such as Crunchbase, Dealroom and Pitchbook, as well as details provided by the investors, reveals that out of the 22 fintech investors recorded in Switzerland, 18 are VCs firms while four are corporate VC (CVC) funds.
These investors are located in strategic locations where the concentration of fintech startups is high. The vast majority of them (10) are based in Zurich, Switzerland’s tech startup hub and biggest fintech ecosystem. Zug, Geneva and Lausanne follow suit with two fintech investors each. Other locations represented include Pfaffikon, Bern, Liechtenstein and Gland.
The data also highlights the prominence of early-stage investors, with 18 out of the 22 fintech investors in Switzerland focusing on pre-seed, seed and Series A stage startups solely. In contrast, only four investors are backing growth and late-stage startups looking to secure Series B rounds or larger investments. These findings corroborate with other research which highlight the lack of follow-on funding capabilities in Switzerland and limited access to VC for later-stage investments.
Early-stage fintech investors
14Peaks Capital
Based in Zug, 14Peaks Capital is an early-stage investor in business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies located in Europe and the US. Within SaaS the focus is across three core verticals: fintech, proptech, and the future of work.
14Peaks Capital initially partners with founders from pre-seed to Series A and provides on-going support throughout their growth journey via capital, operational involvement, network access and strategic advice.
Fintech companies in 14Peaks Capital’s portfolio include Dutch fraud prevention specialist Threat Fabric, American earned wage access (EWA) provider Rain, and Swiss interconnected cash management platform Instimatch Global.
ACE Ventures
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Geneva, ACE Ventures invests in early-stage founders building enduring companies in climate tech, deeptech, fintech and software.
Comprised of a team of operators, engineers, and investors, ACE Ventures combines capital with expertise to empower and uplift bold entrepreneurs on their journey. The firm’s engagement extends beyond financial investment, offering meaningful support informed by their own experiences in the grind and hustle of building companies.
ACE Ventures portfolio companies include cloud-based payroll service Dopay, London-based GoCardless, and German digital bank N26.
Allegory Capital
Founded in 2019, Allegory Capital is a venture-building firm providing strategic and operational support to bold entrepreneurs and ideas. The firm focuses on tech startups disrupting regulated industries in Europe and Switzerland, supporting the growth of these startups from seed to Series A stage. It is particularly interested in ventures in digital health, fintech and greentech.
Portfolio companies of Allegory Capital include Unblock, a digital asset platform, Pryv.io, a Swiss personal data and privacy management software provider, and healthcare startup PiQuant.
Alpana Ventures
Alpana Ventures is a Swiss VC firm supporting promising deeptech solutions in Switzerland, Europe and the US. The firm invests in them to embed their solutions into innovative business models. Since 2016, Alpana Ventures has backed 45 founder teams, supporting them in their journey towards a positive impact.
Fintech companies in its portfolio include The Glue, a Belgian software platform provider serving financial institutions, Flowcast, an American AI company that helps financial institutions make smarter credit decisions, and Zact, a real-time corporate expense management solution from the US.
Arc Investors
Arc Investors is a VC firm based in Zurich that supports impact-driven entrepreneurs and cutting-edge technologies poised to reshape traditional ecosystems. Leveraging the partners’ background and access to legacy industries, the firm operates at the intersection of industry and technology, aiming to improve the success rates of entrepreneurial endeavors.
Arc Investors’ investment philosophy emphasizes the importance of connecting relevant dots between established industries and emerging technologies, facilitating validation, de-risking, and accelerating access and scale. The firm engages across sectors, including special situations, with a preference for B2B or business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) solutions in industrial and enterprise technology, fintech and digital health.
Baloise
Baloise is an insurance holding company headquartered in Basel and the third-largest Swiss all-industry insurance provider for individuals and businesses. Its CVC fund focuses on strategic investments in innovative startups and growth-stage companies that align with Baloise’s core business areas and strategic objectives. It partners with innovative startups and emerging companies to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, improve its competitive position, and provide innovative solutions to its customers.
In addition to providing financial support, the CVC fund offers strategic guidance, industry expertise, and access to its network of resources to help portfolio companies succeed and grow.
Helvetia Venture Fund
The Helvetia Venture Fund invests in early-stage startups poised to shape the future of insurance. It is the CVC fund of international insurance Helvetia headquartered in St Gallen. The fund is run by former entrepreneurs and takes a very hands-on approach, placing a lot of emphasis on the relationship with the founders.
Portfolio companies of the Helvetia Venture Fund include Flitter, a mobile-first insurtech focusing on car insurances, Napo, a digital-first pet insurtech startups, and Coinscrap Finance, a financial health artificial intelligence (AI) platform.
Polytech Ventures
Founded in 2015, Polytech Ventures is an early-stage VC firm operating out of Switzerland and Silicon Valley, with a strong international focus. Strategically located at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), which is renowned as one of the world’s foremost innovation hubs, the firm maintains a constant presence in Silicon Valley and aims to bridge global innovation ecosystems.
Polytech Ventures boasts a team of seasoned investment professionals and industry experts with over 100 years of collective experience. The firm invests in seed and early-stage companies operating in the fintech, proptech, healthtech, human resources (HR) tech and foodtech.
Its portfolio of companies comprises Bitcoin investment app Relai, point-of-sale (POS) terminal provider Kiwi, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform Lend as well as Digital Asset company Taurus and Regtech provider Netguardians.
PostFinance Ventures
PostFinance Ventures is the CVC fund of PostFinance, a financial institution based in Switzerland. The fund participates in innovative startups, especially those in the fintech sector, supporting these startups with limited funds.
PostFinance Ventures offers various types of participation: CVC, innovation participations, and cooperation participations. It tailors its collaborations to its partners’ needs to ensure every company can benefit as much as possible.
Fintech companies in which PostFinance Ventures has invested in include Swedish climate tech startup Doconomy, German social financial network and personal finance tool provider Moneymeets, and Austrian social trading and investing platform Wikifolio.
Prediction Capital
Prediction Capital is an early-stage consumer tech and fintech investment firm. It partners with pioneering startups and support founders not only financially but also by actively aiding their progress with its expertise and network.
Prediction Capital primarily invests in the German, Austrian and Swiss (DACH) region, and looks for founders with the potential to positively impact society.
Companies in its portfolio include Heritas, a German company automating and standardizing the inheritance process digitally, and Bling, a German mobile application for children banking.
Redstone
Founded in 2014, Redstone is an European VC firm following selected investment strategies. The firm has specialized investment teams for each strategy, a strategy that has enabled it to develop strong sector expertise and networks.
Redstone has created a proprietary startup analytics and data platform called Sofia which allows it to make evidence-based and data-driven investment decisions. This platform enables it to predict industry trends, benchmark the segments, and identify appropriate investment targets.
Redstone is headquartered in Berlin with offices in Zurich and Helsinki. Fintech startups in its portfolio include Atlas Metrics, a German climate fintech startup, Banxware, a German SaaS provider for embedded financial services, and Finanzguru, a German digital and individual financial assistance based on AI.
Seed X Liechtenstein
Seed X Liechtenstein is a European-focused VC firm with strong roots in Liechtenstein. The firm helps startups scale by providing a strong network of experienced entrepreneurs and industry leaders. It selectively collaborates with qualified investors and focuses on investing in strong teams with a clear value proposition and relevant business traction.
Seed X Liechtenstein invests in pre-seed, seed and Series A round, targeting international teams with diverse founders from different genders, races, and nationalities. Its investment scope includes fintech, insurtech, proptech and legaltech startups.
Fintech startups in its portfolio include Elucidate, a financial crime risk quantification platform, Troy, a debt collection platform, and Helvengo, an Internet-of-Things (IoT) insurance platform.
Seedstars International Ventures
Seedstars International Ventures is an industry-agnostic VC fund dedicated to global emerging and frontier markets. The firm has invested in over 30 countries across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, backing ventures that work to solve key societal challenges such as access to financial services, healthcare, education, or commerce.
Headquartered in Geneva, Seedstars International Ventures operates with a hands-on methodology, emphasizing capacity building, impact investment, community engagement, and market insights. Fintech startups in its portfolio include Cubo from El Salvador, Kuunda from South Africa and Datacultr from India.
SpiceHaus Partners
SpiceHaus Partners is a Swiss VC investor focusing on early-stage companies in the technology sector in Switzerland. The firm’s team combines investment experience and entrepreneurship, believing in creating long-term partnerships between entrepreneurs and investors.
Spicehaus Partners drives digital transformation by backing successful founders, and has a strong investment portfolio with more than 35 companies funded. These startups include Amnis, a payment platform for international money transfer, Descartes Finance, a digital asset manager, and Fidentity, an online identification and digital signature specialist.
Tenity
Tenity is a startup incubator, accelerator and early-stage VC based in Zurich. The firm is primarily focused on powering the future of finance. With its incubator and accelerator, it foster collaboration between startups, incumbents and investors.
Tenity operates the longest-running fintech innovation hub in Switzerland, and is currently running the 11th incubation program in Zurich for ambitious early-stage fintech and insurtech founders. It works with world-leading organizations in Switzerland and beyond, and has a extensive portfolio of startups which includes Dematrading.ai, a crypto startup, SmartPurse, a financial education platform, and Elysium, a self-custody wallet for digital assets.
Tomahawk.vc
Tomahawk.vc is an entrepreneur-led early-stage VC firm focusing on pre-seed, seed and Series A investments. The firm invests in global-first companies, particularly those that are driving digital transformation.
Tomahawk.vc’s portfolio includes companies in various sectors such as fintech, decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain, and more. These companies include Buynomics, a pricing tools for transactional businesses, Grape, a digital employee insurance company, and Lano, a German software solution enabling businesses to hire and pay full-time employees and contractors.
TX Ventures
TX Ventures is the CVC arm of TX Group, a Swiss media company headquartered in Zurich. The fund invests in companies that democratize access to financial products, empower people to gain financial security, and improve efficiency and sustainability. It targets early-stage startups operating in the fintech, proptech, insurtech and digital assets sectors, focusing on the DACH and broader European region.
Companies in the portfolio of TX Ventures include Monito, a Swiss money transfer startup, Selma Finance, an independent financial advisor, Neon, a Swiss neobanking startup, and Pricehubble, a real estate price intelligence software.
UBS Next
UBS Next is an early-stage VC fund managed by the UBS Group. The fund was launched for the group to further engage with fintech startup and the broader tech ecosystem, accelerate innovation by making strategic venture investments in fintech and enterprise technology companies, and find new ways to engage with its clients and deliver its services.
UBS Next focuses on several key areas: hyper-personalization, sustainability and impact, DeFi, future wealth, platform enhancements, and partner ecosystems.
Its portfolio comprises companies including Synthesized, a data generation platform, Numarics, a platform that digitizes and expands financial and administrative solutions for small and mediums-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Switzerland, and Tenity, the Swiss startup incubator and accelerator.
Late- and multi-stage fintech investors
EQT Partners
EQT Partners is a global investment organization based in Zurich. The firm focuses on active ownership strategies and has a track record of almost three decades of delivering consistent and attractive returns across multiple geographies, sectors, and strategies.
EQT Partners’ mission is to invest in good companies across the world and help them develop into great and sustainable companies. To achieve these goals, it provides access to ownership skills and operational expertise, which helps the acquired companies grow and prosper, both under EQT Partners’ ownership and with future owners.
Fintech companies in its portfolio include Mambu, a SaaS cloud banking platform, and Mollie, a payment platform from the Netherlands.
FiveT Fintech
FiveT Fintech is a Swiss investment company that focuses on redesigning financial services through digitization and the use of cutting-edge technologies. Formerly known as Avaloq Ventures, FiveT Fintech collaborates closely with Avaloq’s ecosystem, which includes over 150 financial institutions across more than 30 countries with a total of US$4.5 billion in client assets.
FiveT Fintech engages with 120+ fintech startups. Its mission is to help banks and financial service providers venture into new areas and provide early-stage fintech companies a platform to prosper and scale.
Companies in its portfolio include Assetmax, an integrated software platform that allows independent asset managers to automate repetitive work and to focus on their core business activities, and Metava, a fully integrated digital asset management solution for banks and exchanges, and Optio Pay, an open banking specialist.
G Squared
G Squared is a global VC fund manager established in 2011 and based in Zurich. The firm provides transitional capital to portfolio companies, addressing the growing trend of venture-backed firms staying private for longer durations. It focuses on investing in companies that tackle significant challenges, disrupt industries, and challenge the status quo, offering elite access to value creation in private markets.
G Squared’s portfolio encompasses over 100 companies, including prominent names like Airbnb, Coursera, Instacart, and Spotify, as well as emerging disruptors such as airSlate, Brex, and Gorillas. Fintech startups in its portfolio include Airwallex, a financial services platform for businesses, Brex, a B2B financial product provider, and Chime, an American mobile banking app.
Lakestar
Founded in 2012, Lakestar is a VC firm headquartered in Zurich and with offices in Berlin and London. The firm invests in tech companies led by exceptional entrepreneurs, focusing on sectors including tech, Internet, fintech, healthcare, digitalization infrastructure, industrial, deeptech, gaming, B2B commerce and climate tech.
Lakestar accompanies its founders from seed to exit, and manages an aggregated volume of over EUR 2.8 billion across four funds.
Fintech companies in its portfolio include French insurtech startup Alan, crypto company Blockchain, and enterprise payment infrastructure company Imburse.