Understanding babies, plants and micro-organisms – with AI

Dear reader

Maxi-Cosi is best known worldwide for its children’s pushchairs and car seats. Now the brand is launching a baby monitor that helps parents correctly interpret their baby’s cries, based on the technology of Swiss start-up Zoundream. The year-long collaboration with Maxi-Cosi has now led to the start-up’s first large-scale market launch.

Vivent is all about understanding plants. Its AI-enabled technology gives farmers early warning of disease, nutrient deficiency and water stress, using biological signals from the plants. Now two investment companies with a focus on the agritech sector have invested in Vivent.

The use of digitalisation in the health and agritech sectors leads time and again to fascinating applications and the fact that there are many successful Swiss start-ups in this environment is cause for optimism. An established Swiss player, Debiopharm, is proof: since 2017, the USD 150 million Debiopharm Innovation Fund has focused on digital health. Additional money has now been made available for investment in start-ups in the seed phase. Two investments have already been made, one in Tune Insight. The investment fund participated in the seed round of the start-up, which has developed a confidential collaborative analytics and privacy-preserving machine learning solution to be used in the context of data-based personalised medicine.

Nagi Bioscience’s laboratory platform screens drugs and chemicals on micro-organisms in a fully automated and standardised way, thus reducing testing on animals. The company has secured an CHF 12.4 million investment in an oversubscribed series A funding round. Other ambitious and promising digital health start-ups can be found in our article on the Future of Health Grant programme.

Speaking of support, the new Swiss consulate will open in Osaka on Saturday, thus expanding the Swissnex network to include a location in Japan. Find out what start-ups can expect in our article.

However, it is unclear when there will be a Swiss innovation fund. The Council of States decided this week that the commission responsible should discuss the issue in more depth.

The deadline for the Swiss Accelerator is imminent – deeptech start-ups should definitely not miss it. The call for applications for Innovaud and IMD’s LeadiNNg to Scale-Up programme is open until 10 October. Applications for the SEF.Women Award can be made until 8 October.

The application deadlines for the Boost My Startup Challenge and for free workspace for up to six start-ups at the Büro Züri location in the Switzerland Innovation Park in Dübendorf end this weekend.

Startup Nights will take place again in Winterthur at the beginning of November. Applications for the pitching competition, which will be held on the main stage of the event, are open until 5 October. Trust Valley Day will take place in Lausanne next week; my colleague Eugène Schön will be there and he will also attend the Future Health Event.

Have a good weekend.
Stefan Kyora 

Editor in Chief Startupticker.ch