Real estate teams spend countless hours on manual, repetitive tasks—from entering data into ERP systems to approving invoices and compiling reports. These processes are time-consuming, error-prone, and often lack the precision needed for high-quality business analysis.

Anevo, a Zurich-based ETH spin-off, addresses this inefficiency with an automation platform designed specifically for the real estate sector. By integrating directly into a company’s core systems, the platform mirrors what employees see and performs the same tasks they would—extracting data from various document types, processing invoices, and generating reporting-ready KPIs. Leveraging recent advances in large language models and AI, Anevo combines natural language processing with domain-specific expertise and robust safety measures to ensure accuracy and reliability.

The startup has already attracted several prominent clients, including stock-listed real estate companies, insurance firms, and public institutions. Its pre-seed round, supported by Innovationsstiftung der SZKB, Hohle Gasse AG, and angel investors Dominik Grolimund and Reto Lämmler, will allow Anevo to advance its product development and expand across Switzerland.

Looking ahead, Anevo aims to make its automation platform accessible to real estate companies and property managers of all sizes, with the long-term goal of becoming Europe’s leading provider of real estate automation solutions.


Anevo's Co-Founders Tiago Salzmann, Yvan Bosshard, and Rafaél Monasterios

Additional Links
Anevo's profile on Venture Kick

calmea: Engineering better sleep
Chronic stress and poor sleep affect over a third of adults, costing billions in lost productivity and health expenses. Existing solutions are often short-term or impractical. calmea offers science-based and comfortable solutions to restore sleep and relaxation naturally.
calmea develops smart robotic beds that enhance deep, restorative sleep through gentle swaying movements. Unobtrusive sensors monitor sleep and enable personalized, real-time adjustments based on physiological feedback. Founded by Dr. Alexander Breuss and Manuel Fujs, MSc, calmea combines scientific insight with innovation. Backed by two patents and validated in research and wellness settings, the company targets the rapidly growing USD 200B global sleep tech and wellness market.
The Venture Kick funding will help calmea refine its business case, engage early customers, and prepare pilot deployments, paving the way for market entry.

LabDeep: Unlock hidden data for life sciences R&D
Over 70% of all scientific data remains inaccessible and therefore underused, leading to an estimated USD 330 billion in wasted resources annually. Much of this knowledge sits in forgotten databases or never gets published. If unlocked, this hidden information could prevent scientists from repeating redundant experiments and allow them to plan more effectively, saving time, money, and resources.
LabDeep is an AI-powered platform transforming how scientific knowledge is managed. We collect, curate, and make available underused or unpublished data, turning it into a reusable resource. The team is led by Dr. Catharina Sänger, CEO, a molecular biologist with management consulting experience who witnessed this problem firsthand, and Sebastian Schilbe, CTO, a seasoned tech leader with expertise in scalable solutions. They are targeting the R&D market for biotechs.
The Venture Kick funds will help develop an MVP, covering two main needs: securing legal consulting for compliant data collection, and allocating the remainder to core product development. Labdeepdata.com

MINYSA: GaN (Gallium Nitride) semiconductor drivers that make power systems smaller, cooler, cheaper
Today’s power-silicon drivers are overheating, oversized, and too expensive across e-mobility, drones, robots, satellites, and data centers. GaN could fix it, but adoption is blocked by complexity, cost, and lack of integrated control.
MINYSA builds GaN-optimized gate-driver ICs and reference modules that unlock higher power density and efficiency while cutting cost and time-to-market. Targeting the fast-growing GaN power market of USD 3 billion, 42% CAGR (USD 19 billion by 2035), their solution enables up to 50% smaller, 20% cooler systems, and 25% lower total cost. The startup focuses on e-mobility, commercial drones, industrial robots, space, and data-center power. Early traction includes a pilot customer and a working prototype. MINYSA is led by founder & CEO Salem Abid, supported by an R&D team with 80+ cumulative patents and 100+ years of experience in power semiconductors.
Venture Kick funding will support marketing, B2B outreach, and a prototype to accelerate customer pilots and design-ins.

STATecovery: Making cellular signaling visible to accelerate drug development
Drug development for cancer and autoimmunity is slow and expensive. Current tools provide only static snapshots of a drug's effect on key signaling pathways like JAK-STAT, completely missing the real-time dynamics inside living cells that ultimately determine therapeutic success.
STATecovery's proprietary STATeLight biosensor platform solves this, helping pharmaceutical companies develop drugs faster while reducing late-stage failures and cutting costs. Their technology, protected by a patent application filed by the University of Zurich, provides a direct, continuous visualization of a drug's mechanism of action in living cells. Delivered as ready-to-use engineered cell lines, the platform offers a straightforward, single-step protocol compatible with standard laboratory equipment, including microscopes and high-throughput plate readers. STATecovery was founded by Dr. Roman Meledin and Thi Nguyen as a planned spin-out from the University of Zurich laboratory of Prof. Onur Boyman, to target the USD 21 billion cell-based assay market in oncology and immunology.
Venture Kick funds will support business development and market validation.

SurgExplore: AI-powered Software as a Medical Device
Every day, thousands of surgical videos are recorded and stored for regulatory and compliance purposes. However, this valuable source of information remains largely unutilized. Without intelligent tools to structure and interpret this data, valuable insights are lost, limiting surgical learning, quality improvement, and innovation.
Founded by experts in surgical AI, computer science, and product design, SurgExplore develops technology that transforms surgical videos into structured, searchable insights. Their platform enables automated documentation and intelligent video exploration, addressing a serviceable market of over CHF 1 billion while empowering surgeons through data-driven insights.
Venture Kick funding will support prototype refinement and strengthen product validation through early testing and feedback.
 

CycloWatt: Providing pro-level insights for amateur cyclists
Power is the gold standard in cycling performance: it’s the most objective measure of how hard you are working, making it essential for effective training and pacing strategies. Yet most hobby cyclists ride without a power meter because of the prohibitive cost and deployment complexity. CycloWatt changes that by harnessing AI-driven technology to deliver an accurate and affordable power meter.
The co-founders, Victor Luder and Levi Luder, are passionate amateur cyclists who have experienced the problem firsthand. Combining Victor’s technical expertise with Levi’s entrepreneurial drive, they have positioned CycloWatt to innovate and disrupt the cycling technology market. CycloWatt reinvents power measurement and provides an affordable and user-friendly solution. They introduce a cutting-edge Internet of Things (IoT) device that seamlessly integrates force signals with inertial sensor data while leveraging the power of edge machine learning techniques.
The amateur cycling powermeter market is worth well over 1 billion USD. The team aims to use Venture Kick financing to boost business development and prepare for market entry.

Flatable: Becoming the global leader in flat hunting by reimagining the entire process
Flatable addresses the frustration of finding a shared flat or roommate. Current platforms are inefficient, filled with unresponsive listings, scams, and little personalization — leading to wasted time and mismatched living situations.
Founded by ETH Zurich graduate Safras Rawfal, Flatable is an AI-driven mobile app that uses personality-based matching to connect users with compatible roommates and shared flats. It offers a fully integrated journey, from matching and viewing scheduling to digital contract signing, all in one secure platform. The startup targets students, young professionals, and landlords, starting in Switzerland and expanding into a global shared housing market worth over CHF 7.7 billion.
The Venture Kick funding will be used for targeted marketing campaigns to acquire early users. Funds will go into online and offline outreach, building strong network effects from day one.

TightValve: First surgical device for measuring valve leakage during heart surgery
One treatment option for aortic root diseases is valve-sparing aortic root replacement, which repairs the valve and replaces the aortic root with a graft. The valve's tightness can only be assessed after surgery, and in 20% of the cases, reoperation is required. This is harmful,  costly, and may prevent treatment for fragile patients due to the high risk. 
TightValve has developed a simple and fast measuring device to directly quantify valve leakage during surgery. In the western world (EU, USA, CAN), 25k David procedures/year are conducted, a number that can be increased if the high re-operation risk can be reduced. The funding team of TightValve is composed of a CEO Silje Ekroll Jahren, a biomedical engineer, CTO Lukas Glaus a mechanical engineer and heart surgeon, CMO Emmanuel Zimmer a heart surgeon, and scientific advisor Prof. Dominik Obrist. 
The Venture Kick funds will contribute to building a quality management system to be used on the regulatory path towards FDA/CE approvals.

Additional Links
Behind the Jury: Perspectives from Venture Kick Jury Member Dr. Bettina Ernst Behind the Jury: Perspectives from Venture Kick Jury Member Jim Pulcrano

Dexterous Endoscopes: Empowering doctors to achieve optimal patient outcomes
Millions of endoscopic procedures are performed annually using rigid or flexible instruments to access internal sites. Rigid endoscopes cannot bend into confined spaces. Flexible ones reach further but lack the force and precision for effective tissue dissection. Surgeons are therefore forced to choose between reach, precision, and control.
Dexterous Endoscopes has developed a variable-stiffness scope engineered to overcome existing limitations. Its ability to switch between rigid and soft modes on command is key. In the soft state, the scope can safely navigate complex organ anatomy to the target zone. In the rigid state, it resists buckling. It provides additional stability, enabling concentrated force with instruments passed through the working channel for high-quality tissue dissection or delivering greater stability for laser surgeries.
The Venture Kick funding will support preclinical trials, demonstration of the technology, and advancement of business development activities.

latentfusion.ai: Optimizing protein-based therapeutics to unlock innovative treatments
97% of all protein-based therapeutics fail before approval, after millions of US dollars and a large effort have been invested into their development. Up to 50% of those failures could be avoided with optimized protein candidates.
latentfusion.ai provides AI-driven protein optimization, helping biotech partners fix critical issues in lead candidates. This accelerates research, boosts licensing potential, and avoids dead-end projects. Most importantly, it increases the chances of life-changing treatments reaching patients.
latentfusion.ai was founded by CEO Elias Hagmann, with a background in computer science from ETH Zürich, and CSO Dieter Schiegg, with a background in Biochemistry from the University of Zürich. Together, they bring over 25 years of experience in the biotech industry.  The core market consists of 3,000+ therapeutic biotech companies that currently spend over USD12 billion on protein lead optimization.
The Venture Kick funds will be used to reach potential customers, establish strategic partnerships, and accelerate market entry.

LightSeeds: Reducing Solar Installation Costs with Lightweight, Low-Carbon Technology
LightSeeds addresses a major barrier to solar adoption: the high cost and complexity of installing traditional photovoltaic systems, especially on infrastructure like roads and railways. Their solution replaces heavy, fragile glass panels with lightweight, rigid, and recyclable modules that cut total installed costs by 20% and halve the carbon footprint.
Founded in 2024 by Laure-Emmanuelle Perret and Pierrick Duvoisin, LightSeeds brings together 30+ years of expertise in photovoltaics, industrial design, and public-private innovation. With patents pending and pilot installations realised, the startup targets a USD 46M market (SOM) in Europe and Switzerland until 2027 with a scalable licensing model.
The Venture Kick Stage I funds will support industrialization, strengthen the team, and accelerate market entry through new strategic partnerships and field deployments.
 

Additional Links
Behind the Jury: Perspectives from Venture Kick Jury Member Jim Pulcrano Behind the Jury: Perspectives from Venture Kick Jury Member Dr. Bettina Ernst

RetinAI develops innovative software that collects, processes, and analyzes large-scale retinal images and biomarker datasets. Its flagship platform, RetinAI Discovery, FDA-cleared and CE-marked, uses AI models to support the diagnosis and monitoring of eye conditions such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy. By providing actionable insights, RetinAI helps healthcare professionals make more informed and timely decisions in patient management.

From the very beginning, the Medtech company's goal has been to harness the power of data and AI to transform patient care. This next chapter with EssilorLuxottica allows it to take that mission further—scaling its impact globally and strengthening its contribution to the future of patient care.

Beyond clinical applications, RetinAI collaborates with pharmaceutical companies and research organizations to accelerate drug development and clinical studies. Its AI-driven platform leverages real-world evidence to streamline workflows across clinical, research, and pharmaceutical domains.

Being acquired by EssilorLuxottica enables RetinAI to scale its technology globally, integrating its AI-powered solutions into a leading eyecare ecosystem. The move highlights RetinAI’s role in redefining eye health through advanced data, machine learning, and retinal imaging.

RetinAI has been ranked among the Top100 Swiss Startups, won Venture Kick, and participated in Venture Leaders Life Sciences and Venture Leaders China.


RetinAI team

Additional Links
RetinAI's profile on Venture Kick

The first closing of Neology Hydrogen’s funding round brings in CHF 1.7 million in equity commitments from Swiss and international backers. The round is led by the investment group of serial entrepreneur Roland Bartholet, with contributions from Kickfund, CoreAngels Climate, and ongoing support from Venture Kick alongside a network of early angel investors. Public co-financing includes a CHF 250,000 matching grant from the City of Zurich, while additional non-dilutive support is being explored in Vaud.

This funding will accelerate the rollout of Neology’s 50 kW Ammonia Power Generator (APG) units, expected to enter the market between late 2026 and early 2027. These off-grid systems are designed to replace diesel-powered machinery in sectors such as ports, mining, and agriculture, reducing emissions while maintaining reliable power supply.

Having been ranked among the Top100 Swiss Startups and a Venture Kick winner, Neology is securing green ammonia supplies for field deployments through established European partners starting in 2025, ensuring a sustainable fuel source for its zero-emission technology. By combining innovative power generation with renewable fuel, Neology Hydrogen aims to provide industries with practical solutions for transitioning away from fossil fuels.


Neology Hydrogen Team

Additional Links
Neology wins CHF 150,000 to develop novel solution for carbon-free energy supply Neology Hydrogen's profile on Venture Kick

Eldian Biomed: Injectable Microcushions for Damaged Joints
Osteoarthritis (OA) affects over 500 million people and is a leading cause of disability. Current treatments offer only temporary relief and fail to stop disease progression, underscoring the need for disease-modifying solutions.
Eldian Biomed, a spin-off from the University of Bern, is developing CloudLi—a patented microcushion technology of lipid nanoparticles crosslinked with peptide linkers, targeting both inflammation and cartilage wear. In animal models, CloudLi showed marked improvements in joint structure and well-being. The team is led by Gregor Bordon, supported by the research infrastructure of the University of Bern, including the labs of Prof. Paola Luciani and Prof. Jean Louis Reymond. The OA therapy market is projected to reach USD 17B by launch, with CloudLi addressing a USD 1–1.4B segment for non-end-stage knee OA in Europe and the US.
Venture Kick funding will support trademark filings, website setup, and presence at key investor conferences ahead of a 2026 raise.

NanoZymeX: Delivering enzyme therapies precisely where they are needed
NanoZymeX is a health startup project developing a new therapy for rare genetic conditions known as lysosomal storage diseases. Their innovative approach uses lipid-based nanoparticles to deliver therapeutic enzymes directly into cells, helping the body break down harmful substances more effectively. Current treatments for lysosomal storage diseases often struggle to get the needed enzymes into the right parts of the body, especially inside cells where they’re needed most. As a result, patients face frequent, high-dose infusions with limited efficacy and high risk of immune responses. 
The startup project is led by Boris Sevarika and Margarita C. Dinamarca, based at the University of Basel within the Nanopharmaceutical and Regulatory Science Group of Professor Scott McNeil. The team is developing a lipid nanoparticle-based enzyme delivery platform that encapsulates therapeutic enzymes and delivers them to the place in the body where they are needed. The first target is Pompe disease, a rare neuromuscular disorder with a global market exceeding USD 2 billion, but the platform is adaptable to a broad range of enzyme-driven indications in rare and metabolic diseases. This next-generation treatment aims to improve the lives of patients with these often-overlooked and difficult-to-treat disorders.
With Venture Kick support, the NanoZymeX team will refine its business model, conduct structured interviews with stakeholders to validate the solution, and expand its network of key opinion leaders in enzyme therapy and lysosomal storage disorders. These activities will position the project for incorporation and fundraising, laying a strong foundation for future growth.

OOVIE Studios: Interactive AI Movies that Change Every time you Watch them, Powered by Live Music and Human Interaction
Classical music struggles to engage younger and broader audiences, who seek more immersive, multimedia formats than traditional concerts.
Incorporated in May 2025 in Lugano by five co-founders – CEO Riccardo Acciarino, COO Marco Seco, CTO Ignacio Palladino, CAO & Sales Manager Giulio Casagrande, and CMO Lorenzo Ramon – OOVIE Studios transforms the visions of the musicians into interactive AI movies, crafted by world-renowned AI artists. The narrative changes every time automatically following the nuances of music and audience input. OOVIE bridges several markets with common needs, adapting its format for both the musical and corporate world. After launching its first immersive brand experience with EssilorLuxottica – EA7, the startup will premiere its launch tour with Grammy-winning violinist Maxim Vengerov during the Venice Film Festival, at the Trieste Festival, and Teatro Piccolo “Strehler” in Milan.
They will use the Venture Kick funds to organize a private client roadshow, register the trademark, and cover key team travel expenses for the launch tour.

beMarrow: Bridging the Gap Between Preclinical and Clinical Outcomes for Hematological Disorders
One of the main challenges in hematopoietic drug development is the lack of reliable in vitro models that accurately predict drug efficacy and toxicity, thereby slowing the progress of effective new therapies. Mostly used conventional cultures do not sustain hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell function over time, and stromal feeder systems lack the architectural complexity needed to mimic drug resistance. This limits the assessment of therapeutic response and safety, especially for long-term studies, and leads to higher rates of late-stage drug failure.
Initiated by Dr. Dilara Perver at Prof. Dr. Viola Vogel’s Laboratory of Applied Mechanobiology at ETH Zürich, beMarrow develops customizable three-dimensional bone marrow microphysiological systems (BM-MPS) that more closely reflect the complexity of human bone marrow in health, disease, and during combinatorial advanced therapies. With a current focus on the most common leukemia in adults, Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), and Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MS), the model systems were developed to integrate seamlessly with standard laboratory workflows, making adoption straightforward and enabling the generation of scalable, multi-model, human-relevant data. beMarrow addresses a global preclinical testing market valued at over CHF 5 billion in 2023, with demand rising as regulatory bodies mandate non-animal methodologies and functional, bidirectional assays.
Venture Kick funding will support Dr. Dilara Perver in her early business development efforts.

CAPTAIM - Apheryon: Next-generation liquid biopsy of cancer
Most cancer patients still lack access to personalized vaccines because traditional biopsies are invasive, risky, or unfeasible. This exclusion limits precision oncology and leaves a large patient segment without tailored therapeutic options.
Founded by scientists and clinicians from ETH Zurich and University Hospital Zurich, Apheryon AG is developing CAPTAIM as its main product, a next-generation liquid biopsy using cytapheresis and microfluidics to isolate millions of circulating tumor cells (CTCs). CAPTAIM enables full-scale tumor profiling for all patients, including those without tumor lesions accessible to classical biopsies or surgery. Targeting the USD 12B liquid biopsy market, it expands eligibility for cancer vaccines and precision therapies, offering a breakthrough diagnostic bridge between oncology clinics and pharma.
The Venture Kick funds will cover incorporation costs for Apheryon AG, including expert legal support from a leading Swiss firm to draft the shareholders’ agreement, along with notary fees and overhead—securing cofounder alignment and a solid launch framework.

deRISC: Systemic risk intelligence for pharmaceutical supply chains
Pharmaceutical supply chains are fragile and opaque. Local shocks such as factory shutdowns, transport bottlenecks, or trade restrictions cascade globally, leading to medicine shortages and costly disruptions. Yet today’s tools overlook the systemic interdependencies that determine how risks spread.
Founded by ETH Zurich researchers Dr. Georges Andres, Dr. Giona Casiraghi, and Dr. Luca Verginer, deRISC provides a new generation of systemic risk intelligence for pharmaceutical supply chains. Its innovation lies in combining a global map of medicines, manufacturers, and production pathways with proprietary systemic risk models. This enables the simulation of disruption cascades, the detection of hidden risks, and the quantification of systemic vulnerabilities. By focusing on pharma-specific interdependencies and enabling decentralized, federated resilience estimation, deRISC offers the industry a collaborative platform to anticipate shortages and strengthen supply security. Positioned within the rapidly growing supply chain risk management and digital intelligence market (>CHF 10B), deRISC aims to become the new standard for resilience in pharma.
The Venture Kick funds will support the development of deRISC’s business model and the advancement of pilot projects with industry partners.

LearningLevels: A digital learning platform leveraging gamification and social interaction to enhance students’ engagement
An emerging trend in schools is independent study hours for students. The reason is an influx of students, thus a lack of space in schools and less time from teachers per student. Students are confronted and overwhelmed with work but rarely provided with direction.
At the same time, the teachers are overworked and can hardly track their students’ progress, provide them with material, and handle all administrative tasks at once.
From a small idea, Nils Marti and Niko Mojado began implementing a habit tracker, which soon evolved into a full-fledged learning platform after Jessica Bärtschi and Julian Mojado were onboarded. The initial goal remains unchanged: to make learning more engaging for students and to ease the lives of teachers. By providing teachers with the ability to easily structure their material into courses with tangible goals in the form of experience points for students. The global K-12 EdTech market represents a USD 30–70 billion opportunity, driven by over 1.5 billion students worldwide and rapidly growing demand for digital learning solutions.
The Venture Kick funds will help LearningLevels expand its content, strengthen its platform for teachers and students, and accelerate its growth into new schools and markets.

Mentis: Agentic platform for next-gen silicon design
More than 80% of chips fail first silicon due to a spec-to-verification gap. Ambiguous or changing specifications are never fully verified, leading to costly bugs, re-spins,  and billions lost annually.
The founders are experienced ASIC and FPGA engineers now building an AI-driven platform that transforms specifications into verifiable artifacts. Their solution automatically generates assertions, coverage points, and functional models directly from specifications and links them with code and tests in a traceable graph-based system. The spec-driven approach reduces re-spins by 60% and addresses a USD 10B+ inefficiency in the USD 200B semiconductor R&D market.
Mentis team will use the Venture Kick funds to engage directly with leading semiconductor companies and research centers across Europe. 

 

HemostOD is working on a platform that enables the ex vivo production of universal, off-the-shelf human blood platelets, addressing the global need for reliable and safe platelet supply. With the newly secured CHF 4.3 million, the company will move closer to regulatory readiness while proving the scalability of its manufacturing process.

The financing will allow HemostOD to launch a commercial-scale pilot production line, demonstrating that its platelet manufacturing technology can be translated from laboratory scale to industrial application. In parallel, the company plans to hold a pre-Investigational New Drug (IND) meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These steps will enable the company to validate its approach on a larger scale and align with regulatory requirements for future clinical development.

The Biotech startup has won Venture Kick and participated in Venture Leaders Biotech. “With the support of Venture Kick and Venturelab, we improved our pitch and strengthened our interactions with investors,” highlighted Co-Founder and CEO Faouzi Khechana.


HemostOD's CEO (Faouzi Khechana), CSO (Nicoletta Sorvillo), and CTO (Elodie Dahan)

Additional Links
HemostOD's profile on Venture Kick

A brief introduction of Jim Pulcrano
Jim Pulcrano is an engineer by training who, many years ago, recognized that he was not particularly suited for a traditional engineering role. After spending five years working for a French multinational in the USA and Africa, he discovered a preference for collaborating with small teams. This realization led him to pursue an MBA, relocate to Switzerland, and embark on his first of seven startups, three of which he co-founded. He also initiated the IMD Startup Competition, made numerous visits to Silicon Valley, and now directs IMD programs for scaleups and venture capitalists.

Additional Links
Behind the Jury: Perspectives from Venture Kick Jury Member Dr. Bettina Ernst Behind the Jury: Perspectives from Venture Kick Jury Member Christer Bergstroem Behind the Jury: Perspectives from the Venture Kick Jury Member David Kurmann Behind the Jury: Perspectives from the Venture Kick Jury Member Luca Bolliger