Startup Champions Seed Night 2026 - 15th edition

Keynote - Pierre Baqué, Neural Concept

Pierre Baqué, an EPFL alumnus, is the co-founder and CEO of Neural Concept, a Swiss company specialising in artificial intelligence applied to engineering. Its platform enables engineering teams to design and optimise industrial products much more quickly thanks to AI co-pilots integrated directly into their simulation and CAD workflows.

Seed Night story - Florent Héroguel, Bloom Biorenewables

Florent Héroguel is the Co-Founder and co-CEO of Bloom Biorenewables, a company that converts plant biomass into sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based products. Its proprietary technology was developed at EPFL's Laboratory of Sustainable and Catalytic Processes. Bloom Biorenewables won the 2022 edition of the Seed Night.

Apiona
Eugénie Demeure

Apiona is an AI care navigation platform. It guides patients through complex pathways, matching them to the right specialists, helping them prepare for appointments, and making sure they feel safe and understood. The right care, faster. Navigate health, not healthcare. 
 

Carina Power provides a cloud-based control and trading service that optimizes utility-scale BESS across day-ahead, intraday and ancillary service markets. It combines advanced forecasting (electricity prices and PV generation) with learning-based optimization and data-driven battery ageing models, while accounting for grid constraints and grid operator requests.

coprod LLC 
Loïc Delineau

Building the communication standard for robotics components to enable all robots to speak the same language, decreasing development time by 10x and cost by 100x, unlocking innovation in physical shape of robots powered the recent AI breakthroughs.

Déploya 
Jan Petrs

Déploya builds a fast-deployable robotic grid for ventilated façade installation. It replaces scaffolding, improving safety, speed, and quality by enabling precise positioning of workers, tools, and materials across full façades. Targets façade, tooling, and construction firms in a €20B EU market.
 

Dexterous-Endoscopes 
Yegor Piscarev

Dexterous Endoscopes builds variable stiffness endoscopes that let surgeons reach hard-to-access anatomy and then lock shape for stable, precise treatment. This technology makes minimally invasive procedures faster, safer, and more effective across ENT and urology.
 

Fusionality 
Federico Felici

As fusion companies race toward prototype reactors, they all face the same bottleneck: building robust plasma control, data acquisition, and ML-workflow systems requires highly specialized expertise that takes decades to develop. Fusionality solve this by spinning out battle-tested technology directly from EPFL's Swiss Plasma Center — giving fusion companies immediate access to production-ready systems, backed by a team of world-recognized experts in the field.
 

Larmor Systems 
Massimo Carpita

Larmor Systems provides highly efficient, MW-class microwave sources, addressing a current unmet >$1B demand from next-gen clean tech, like nuclear fusion and deep geothermal, and enabling the future of low-carbon industrial heating and long-range communication and power beaming, expanding into a >$50B TAM.
 

Molecl 
Andrey Chernev

Revolutionizing biomolecule processing, from diagnostics to production by unlocking scalable diagnostics and biopharma innovation by precisely capturing critical molecular signatures across complex biological systems.
 

Neurovia 
Omar Shalby

Neurovia develops endovascular neural implants that read and modulate nerve signals from inside blood vessels, enabling precise, reversible control of autonomic functions. It starts with hard-to-treat blood pressure disorders.
 

Obstetrical Care Solutions
Sandra Maria Marcadent
& Johann Hêches 

Childbirth is complex and prone to complications. Although obstetricians are trained in delivery maneuvers, real-time assessment is limited by poor visualization. This technology provides a 3D rendering of the maternal pelvis and fetal head in the delivery room, improving decisions, reducing complications, and enhancing training.
 

OptiZone 
Mina Baniasad

OptiZone develops on-field solutions to predict muscle and joint injury risks, enabling personalized mitigation strategies.
 

OrthoSens 
Gwenael Hannema

OrthoSens makes orthopedic recovery objective and measurable. They transform standard implants into smart devices using battery-free, ultra-thin sensors powered externally. Surgeons get real-time recovery insights, patients recover with confidence and hospitals reduce complications without surgical workflow changes.
 

Raven Intelligent Systems 
Kagan Erünsal & Arsenty Kaganskiy

Building an end-to-end automated work-safety monitoring system for high-risk industrial work sites. It integrates intelligent robotic data collection with regulation-compliant data processing to deliver actionable hazard reports and real-time alerts for industrial environments.

REMA 
Steven Schenk

REMA enables small and medium industrial hydrogen users to replace delivered grey hydrogen with low-cost on-site green hydrogen. They modular AEM electrolysers eliminate logistics costs, unlock PV self-consumption, and open a multi-billion-CHF underserved market.

REON 
Maria Sivers

REON is a Bloomberg-like terminal for circular construction, helping asset managers, cities, and developers turn demolition stock into reusable assets: it predicts which components are worth salvaging (CHF+CO?+feasibility) and matches surplus to buyers.

Rhonexum 
Vicente Carbon 

Developing microelectronics that can operate at temperatures below -270C. Why do we need cold electronics? To miniaturize quantum and space systems that work closely with these "cryogenic environments". By embracing them, Rhonexum can make electronics smaller and the overall systems cheaper, scalable and easier to operate.

Sixteen44 
William Ramsay 

Sixteen44 is a Swiss climate tech company that monetizes the removal of methane, a super pollutant greenhouse gas, from the air. Sixteen44 develops scalable systems to destroy atmospheric methane, helping industries and governments rapidly reduce warming impacts and meet their climate commitments.

TUUS Solutions 
Tiziano Caldara

Tuus is pioneering a patent-pending hydrogel platform that delivers nutrients and drugs at a constant, predictable rate, achieving true zero-order release using natural, scalable materials. Initially focused on sports nutrition, the platform addresses the main pain points of traditional energy gels, including gastrointestinal distress, sugar crashes, and flavor fatigue. It enables customizable and sustained fueling.
 

WindLens 
Matteo Peduto

Developing site-specific, AI-assisted wind-power forecasts for wind operators - reducing uncertainty and costly imbalance penalties (often ~10% of revenue). Paired with our bidding and risk tool, clients improve returns while cutting costs, strengthening wind’s competitiveness.

Zigzag Networks 
Mustafa Yildirim

Zigzag Networks reduces AI data-center network bottlenecks by adding optical “express lanes” between servers. Software detects large data transfers and routes them over light-based circuit switches, easing congestion on the regular network and improving training/inference speed at scale.