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
Nobody knows what work will look like in ten years, which is exactly why we need founders working on it today
Work is changing faster than our schools, companies, and institutions can keep up. That is why Work, Reimagined is the 2027 Spotlight theme, and why we believe startups are best placed to lead the way.
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A workplace in constant motion. AI and a post-pandemic world keep rewriting the rules, and no one knows what a job looks like a year from now, let alone ten.
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Education for the unknown. How do we prepare people for challenges and technologies we have never experienced ourselves?
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Tomorrow's leaders. If AI takes over the tasks that once trained junior talent, where will the next generation of leaders learn their craft?
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Essential workers. Switzerland faces a growing shortage of healthcare workers, and the trades and industries that keep the country running need fresh answers too.
If your startup helps people, teams, or entire sectors prepare for what comes next, we want to see it. The winner receives CHF 50,000.
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.