Dear reader
In the last week of October and the first week of November, not much happened in terms of financing. This week all changed, with the highlight an investment of more than USD 180 million in biotech company Alentis. It is not entirely surprising: the biotech start-up is based on groundbreaking research, already has oncology and fibrosis drug candidates in clinical trials, and is led by Roberto Iacone, a physician-scientist and serial entrepreneur who has worked for Big Pharma and the incubator of a US investor.
Wyden’s financing round of USD 17 million also came as no surprise. The company provides banks with the institutional infrastructure for the entire digital asset trading lifecycle. In recent years, we have repeatedly reported on its acquisition of further banks as customers; most recently, the first French bank to be registered as a virtual asset service provider by the French financial regulator joined Wyden’s customer base.
Other investments this week included LocalStack’s series A round of USD 25 million, a seed round for dental technology company Biolux as well as a follow-on round for Aurealis Therapeutics. In addition, four start-ups secured several million via crowdfunding.
The companies symbolise the innovative power, breadth, excellent talent base and increasing strength of the local ecosystem. It was precisely these advantages and dynamism that the founders of Founderful focused on when they launched the VC in 2019. Their concept of an investor that invests exclusively in Switzerland in the pre-seed phase was met with scepticism at the time. But it has become clear that there are enough good cases and that the Founderful team has the ability to select them. The Zurich VC’s investors also share this view, enabling Founderful to close a second fund at USD 140 million.
Switzerland’s strength in creating new science-based start-ups has been confirmed by IMD’s World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, in which Switzerland achieved second place overall and first place in the knowledge transfer criterion.
Two university spin-offs from the ICT sector were acquired this week: Almer Technologies was bought by US company RealView and LYSR is joining the Mikron Group in Switzerland. Meanwhile, the AMAG Group has named Enerdrape the winner of the inaugural AMAG Sustainability Challenge.
Two biotech companies – Nerai Bio, led by serial entrepreneur Vincent Forster, and Shape Biopharmaceuticals – have each secured CHF 150,000 from Venture Kick.
Next week you can meet me at the first Open-i event and my colleague Ritah Nyakato at the Tech for Impact Awards ceremony in Zurich. Global Entrepreneurship Week is also taking place with many events in the Basel and Lausanne area. I would also like to mention the deadlines for Venture Leaders Mobile, the Tenity Pre-Seed Incubator programme in Zurich and the IC Award for start-ups working on global problems.
Have a good weekend.
Stefan Kyora
Editor in Chief, Startupticker.ch