Scale-Up Vaud celebrates its 10th anniversary this year with the announcement of 44 labelled scale-ups, highlighting the depth and consistency of Vaud’s innovation ecosystem and its ability to generate concrete economic impact in Switzerland and internationally.

Seven new companies join the 2026 community: Atinary, Corintis, Destinus, Enlightra, Nu Glass, Oculis, and Voltiris. Among them, Atinary sees the label as both recognition and a lever for global expansion: “Being recognized as a Scale-up Vaud company is a proud moment for Atinary. This label confirms our growth trajectory and deepens our roots in Switzerland’s premier innovation ecosystem as we scale our Self-Driving Labs® solutions globally” Said Hermann Tribukait, CEO of Atinary.

Economic impact: jobs, capital and exits

The contribution of the 44 labelled companies is reflected in job creation and investment. Collectively, they have created 2,822 jobs in Switzerland and 5,102 jobs in total. In 2025, the cohort raised CHF 689,000,000 in publicly announced fundraising rounds, demonstrating sustained investor confidence in Vaud-based scale-ups.

The year also confirmed the ecosystem’s capacity to support companies through to major outcomes, with two exits in 2025: Nexthink and Doppl.

A new generation scaling faster and earlier

This 2026 intake points to a new generation scaling earlier and faster. Over the last three years, the seven newcomers increased their number of full-time employees by an average of +58%, compared with +27% for last year’s new entrants. They are also significantly younger: 4.4 years old on average, versus 8.8 years for the previous year’s newcomers. Across the full labelled community, the average age is 9.5 years, stable year-on-year – an indicator of a robust pipeline that continually produces mature, investable scale-ups. 

A crucial step

Moving from startup to scale-up is a critical step, full of challenges and potential pitfalls. Doubling the workforce, welcoming new investors, and making numerous strategic decisions— how can one avoid missteps?

LeadiNNg to Scale-Up is a program jointly offered by Innovaud and IMD, designed to support CEOs through this transition. Four editions have already taken place, featuring startups that have since evolved into scale-ups. « Once again, we have a few companies getting the Scale up Vaud label for the first time who have been part of the LeadiNNg to Scale up Program.

Not only do they come more prepared to get the most out of the community but they also know how much the peer exchange they experienced during the program will increase as the Scale up Vaud community is bigger and will benefit the rest of their C-level team” commented Charlotte Ducrot, Head of Scale up Vaud “We look forward to getting the whole community together in the coming weeks, introducing the new companies and integrating them into this amazing network who goes way beyond than just a Label”.

Meet the Valley Scale-ups

Voltiris SA: Voltiris’ innovative spectral filtering solution transmits all light frequencies needed by the crops into the greenhouse and transforms the remaining radiation into renewable power. Crop and energy production don’t have to compete, they complement.

Atinary: The pioneer of Self-Driving Labs®, builds intelligent solutions that unite AI, robotics, and human expertise to accelerate the development of molecules and materials. Atinary reimagines the laboratory space to unlock limitless science, for a healthier and more sustainable future.

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Valley partner, OneAgrix, a Swiss- and Singapore-headquartered trusted trade infrastructure company, holds patent-pending status with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its agentic artificial intelligence infrastructure designed to support regulated global food and FMCG supply chains.

Trade in Halal, Kosher, and Vegan categories operates across dozens of import jurisdictions, hundreds of certification bodies, and overlapping regulatory regimes. At ecosystem scale, verification and compliance workflows remain fragmented and non-interoperable, with supplier eligibility, certification integrity, and trade readiness still dependent on manual coordination across disconnected systems.

Regulated food and FMCG trade represents over ten trillion dollars in annual global trade flows, spanning developed and emerging markets and operating across complex regulatory and certification regimes.

The patent-pending architecture addresses these structural constraints. Rather than functioning as a marketplace or point solution, OneAgrix is designed as a central intelligence layer that coordinates eligibility determination, verification workflows, and trade readiness outputs across stakeholders, geographies, and regulatory environments. The system is manufacturing-integrated infrastructure, embedded into existing production and compliance workflows rather than introduced as a new system of record.

The architecture produces structured trade readiness handoff packages. These are machine-readable and auditable determinations that can be consumed directly by existing enterprise systems, including ERP platforms, quality management systems, certifier portals, customs brokers, and buyer procurement environments. This approach reduces adoption friction while strengthening auditability and regulatory continuity.

While initially developed with Halal trade as a primary focus, the infrastructure is extensible to other regulated categories including Kosher and Vegan, reflecting shared verification and eligibility requirements across values-governed supply chains.

“Regulated trade at scale requires infrastructure that can operate across jurisdictions, certification authorities, and rule systems without fragmentation. This filing reflects years of work building systems where trust, governance, and compliance continuity are designed into the architecture from the outset,”said Diana Sabrain, Founder and CEO of OneAgrix.

OneAgrix’s work has been referenced in the World Economic Forum’s Blockchain Deployment Toolkit and the company has partnered with the International Trade Centre (UN/WTO) to support export readiness and regulated trade workflows for African member states. OneAgrix has also been recognised by COMCEC, the economic cooperation body of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation representing 57 member states, alongside global supply chain operators including Cargill and Kerry Group, as a model for cross-border food provenance systems.

The company has worked with government, trade-linked, and academic institutions across Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia on regulated food and agricultural trade initiatives.

About OneAgrix

OneAgrix is a Swiss- and Singapore-headquartered trusted trade infrastructure company building compliance-first systems for regulated global food and FMCG supply chains. The company supports verification, eligibility determination, and cross-border trade readiness across Halal, Kosher, and Vegan categories. OneAgrix holds USPTO patent-pending status for its agentic AI trade infrastructure.

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To accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture and encourage young people to enter and lead the future of farming, Nestlé is working with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Goodwall globally.

“Regenerative agriculture is essential to the long-term resilience of our business and the global food system,” said Stephanie Hart, Chief Operations Officer of Nestlé. “By combining TNC’s conservation expertise with Goodwall’s ability to mobilize millions of young people, we can accelerate progress and build a more sustainable future for farmers, communities and the planet.”

Nestlé and TNC seek to build on the existing impactful work of the two organizations in co-developing the industry-leading Nestlé Agriculture Framework (pdf, 20Mb). The framework is Nestlé’s plan to help farmers grow better crops, earn more and care for nature at the same time. By working together with TNC, Nestlé aims to refine, expand and accelerate its efforts to support the transition to regenerative agriculture and to encourage more industry stakeholders to join the journey.

Jennifer Morris, CEO of The Nature Conservancy, said: “We are delighted to continue collaborating with Nestlé, a company that shares our commitment for a more resilient food system. Together, we can scale practical, science-based solutions that restore ecosystems, protect biodiversity and strengthen farmer livelihoods.”
Panel discussion on regenerative agriculture and the future of food at a global event

Building more resilient food systems

Bringing the next generation into the agriculture industry is essential to building more resilient food systems and securing the future of food. To demonstrate how farming can be an attractive, secure career going forward, Nestlé is partnering with Goodwall, a global youth learning platform. Nestlé will help Goodwall build its agriculture curriculum, using gamification to raise young people’s awareness and understanding of regenerative agriculture, equip them with practical skills, and empower them as agripreneurs. Through the Goodwall app, young people will be able to engage with each other to discuss practical solutions to real challenges, test their theories, and improve their ideas based on results.

Taha Bawa, Co-founder and CEO of Goodwall, added: “Young people today want to be part of real solutions. This partnership will open new pathways for them to learn, contribute and lead in the shift toward regenerative agriculture.”

Making regenerative agriculture the norm

The two initiatives mark a significant step in Nestlé’s broader abition to make regenerative agriculture the norm across its global sourcing footprint, while building a strong pipeline of next-generation agripreneurs. They follow the announcement that Nestlé is also working with the World Farmers’ Organisation to help make food systems more resilient to climate change through advocacy for fair policies and practical solutions, such as regenerative agriculture, that empower farmers and help them adapt to climate change.

These new collaborations were formally unveiled during this year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, where the initial idea for collaboration was first conceived one year ago. Nestlé’s Chief Operating Officer and the CEOs of TNC and Goodwall participated in a panel moderated by Ana Maria Montero, a former CNN anchor. The event brought together business leaders, conservation experts and young entrepreneurs, who engaged in a conversation on how to collectively accelerate the transition to climate-smart, inclusive food systems.

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