The Spotlight Award
The >>venture>> competition is proud to present the Spotlight Award, a special recognition that shines a light on innovation, creativity, and impact beyond the traditional competition categories. Each year, this award will highlight a new theme, celebrating ventures that dare to push boundaries. Open to all participants, the Spotlight Award reflects the diversity and ingenuity of Switzerland’s most exciting startups and rewards the recipient with CHF 50,000.
2027 Spotlight: Work Reimagined
The traditional 9-to-5 is history. The next generation of enterprise isn't about doing things faster, it’s about changing the rules entirely.
Whether you're building next-gen AI co-pilots, creating seamless hybrid workspace infrastructure, or engineering tools that tackle cognitive burnout, we want to see it. We're awarding CHF 50,000 to the Swiss startup with the most disruptive, high-potential application focusing on the future of work. Don't just join the workforce, reimagine it.
Past Spotlights
2026 Spotlight: Apertus LLM
For our inaugural 2026 award, we shone the spotlight on Apertus—Switzerland’s groundbreaking open-source LLM launched by ETH Zurich, EPFL, and CSCS. Representing a major milestone in sovereign, transparent, and multilingual AI, Apertus was built to support underrepresented languages and empower developers worldwide.
We sought the most creative, high-impact applications of Apertus within the Swiss startup ecosystem, recognizing ventures that demonstrated outstanding technical excellence, innovation, and real-world impact.