Digital twins, new cancer treatments and three unicorns

Spark the entrepreneurial spirit before graduation

No fewer than four of the new spin-offs came to life in the Student Project House – ETH’s ideas workshop for its students. One such spin-off is Bottleplus, which produces a sustainable water bottle that can be used to make carbonated water on the go. Another is AtlasVR AG, which provides virtual reality technology for professional training programmes. “We want society to benefit from our research findings and innovations as quickly as possible. I’m enormously pleased that the Student Project House is succeeding in encouraging students to pursue their ideas and bring them to market,” says Vanessa Wood, Vice President for Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations at ETH Zurich. To further promote entrepreneurship among students and get schoolchildren excited about STEM subjects, ETH also entered into a strategic partnership with UBS in summer 2022.

Three new unicorns and numerous acquisitions

Investment in ETH spin-offs also saw positive development last year. The companies raised around 1.2 billion Swiss francs – more than ever before. Three ETH spin-offs also attained unicorn status in 2022: the term refers to start-ups that are so promising that their market value exceeds one billion dollars even before they go public. These three companies are Scandit, which enables fast scanning even under difficult conditions, as well as Southpole and Climeworks, both of which are dedicated to the fight against climate change.

There were also a number of successful acquisitions: for example, the spin-off Adresta was bought by Bucherer, Animatico was acquired by Nvidia, and FGen was taken over by Ginko Bioworks. Vertical farming herbs from ETH spin-off Yasai also found their way onto Coop shelves in 2022, and Synhelion announced a strategic collaboration with Swiss International Air Lines. “It’s important for ETH that good technologies and ideas give rise to companies with growth potential and thus create new jobs. In this way, the success of our spin-offs becomes the success of Switzerland,” says Vice President Vanessa Wood.

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