Kickfund

Tethys Robotics closes EUR 3.5M pre-seed funding for their underwater drones! With this money, Tethys can further develop its flagship platform, Tethys ONE, to make hazardous underwater operations safer and more accessible. Much of our society relies on underwater infrastructure, such as oil and gas platforms, hydropower plants, offshore wind farms, energy pipelines, or internet cables. Maintaining and securing these is a challenge in turbulent and murky waters – unless you have the right, automated tools! Tethys graduated from Venture Kick in 2024 and joined the Kickfund portfolio in January 2025. If you want to read more about Jonas Wüst's path from an engineering student to the CEO and co-founder of Tethys, check out our interview article "Inspecting the Blue Planet" at https://lnkd.in/e6EDwUFr! Congratulations to the team, and to Redstone, Zürcher Kantonalbank and ETH Foundation for the good investment!

ASTRA Therapeutics had an idea: what if we treat parasites like cancer cells? Parasitic diseases are often called neglected diseases, because their treatment hasn’t seen any major breakthroughs for decades. New vaccines are great at fighting viruses and bacteria, but parasites are experts in adjusting to their host’s immune system. It took the collaboration between a parasitologist and an oncologist to come up with the idea of targeting parasites the way we’ve been targeting cancer cells. We interviewed ASTRA Therapeutics co-founders and co-CEOs, Ashwani Sharma and Natacha Gaillard, about their path from researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute to founding a company around their idea. Spoiler: they couldn’t have done it without the Swiss startup ecosystem filling the knowledge and funding gap between academic research and the corporate world. ASTRA Therapeutics graduated from the Venture Kick program in 2023, joined the Kickfund portfolio in 2024, and closed its first financing round co-led by MIG Capital and Digitalis Ventures this summer. The company is developing its cure for parasitic diseases in livestock and pets, with the potential to expand into human health and agricultural crops in the coming years. Read the interview: https://lnkd.in/ecSHjCxh --- This article is the fourth part of a follow-up series with Kickfund portfolio founders, whose companies were highlighted in the Swiss Deep Tech Report 2025. We give you a chance to learn more about the people and ideas behind some of the numbers and future success stories. 

What does science not teach you about building a startup? Estelle Clerc swapped the lab bench for the boardroom and co-founded CellX Biosolutions. Her hardest experiment? Starting her own company. In this episode, Estelle shares her journey from PhD researcher to biotech Co-Founder and CEO and what it really takes to bring science out of the lab and into the market. She talks about: 💡 Finding the right co-founder and aligning on values early on. 🧬 Moving from academic comfort zones to the uncertainty of entrepreneurship. 🚀 How Swiss startup programs helped her turn an idea into a company. 🎧 Catch the full episode with Estelle, available on our website and wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was co-produced with Kickfund, a VC fund investing in the most promising Swiss deeptech startups. Check out the link in the bio to learn more about them!  #Entrepreneurship #FoundersJourney #StartupLife #StartupLessons #Leadership #WomenInScience #SwissInnovation #PhDToFounder #AcademicEntrepreneurship #Swisspreneur #Swissstartups #Podcast

Estelle Clerc was the strange girl at the party who was passionate about bacteria. She is also the CEO and co-founder of CellX Biosolutions, one of our portfolio companies. Estelle joined the Swisspreneur podcast to talk about the happy accident of discovering a solution against forever chemicals, the challenges of going from PhD research into entrepreneurship, and how amazing bacteria are.  This is the second part in a series of five podcast episodes we are co-producing with Swisspreneur. Click the link to go listen to the full episode! https://lnkd.in/ekeyddxg 

Yesterday’s Vi Partners CEO Day at UBS Grünenhof in Zurich was truly inspiring.   A big thank you to our friends at Vi Partners – Olivier Laplace, Gaetano Zanon, Arnd Kaltofen-Ehmann, and Diego Braguglia – for the kind invitation and a great event.   It was fascinating to hear SpaceX veteran Lauren Lyons share how SpaceX drove down the cost of sending 1 kg of payload to space from up to USD 72,000 to just USD 2,700 (or even around USD 10 with Starship!) – enabling an entire space economy, highlighting the Swiss edge, and calling for more “Ph-Dos.”   Also inspiring was Philipp Spycher, co-founder of Araris Biotech (a Venture Kick alumnus), reflecting on his journey from founding to successful exit – the acquisition by Taiho Pharmaceuticals for USD 400 million upfront, plus up to USD 740 million in milestone payments.   The afternoon closed with Gaetano Zanon’s remarks on the launch of Vi Partners’ next fund, before a nice apéro over canapés.

Neology closes the first part of its financing round to provide green energy for off-grid and industrial applications! The Lutry-based startup joined our portfolio in June 2024, and we were happy to make a follow-on investment in this latest financing round. Neology develops ammonia power generators to replace diesel as an energy source in off-grid situations, such as ports, mining, and agriculture. Congratulations to Aris Maroonian, Ruben Feldman, CFA, and the entire team!

a-metal has been part of our portfolio since May 2024, and we were happy to make a follow-on investment as part of this oversubscribed round led by QBIT Capital! Congratulations to the team!

How does a young deep-tech company scale up production? This was the topic of our recent Kickfund Founders’ Dinner, where a small group of our portfolio founders from hardware-heavy startups got together. Our two expert speakers led the conversation. DECTRIS COO Silke Traut warned  that you shouldn’t look at production as isolated from the rest of your company's growth; you need to build your finances and company culture to support your manufacturing. Serial entrepreneur Kynan Eng shared some wild stories from his past ventures, demonstrating that even the greatest growth plan must adjust to shifts in global politics and market conditions. This dinner was one of many more Kickfund founder events to come! As a result of our co-investment strategy and close collaboration with Venture Kick, in less than two years we already have the largest early-stage deep-tech portfolio in Switzerland. This is an impressive group of companies and people behind them, and we intend to give our founders opportunities to connect and learn from each other. Wanja Humanes, CFA Thomas Möller