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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.​​​

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2026 Spotlight: Apertus LLM

For the inaugural 2026 award, we're spotlighting Apertus — Switzerland's new open-source LLM launched by ETH Zurich, EPFL, and CSCS. It marks a milestone in sovereign, transparent, and multilingual AI, supporting underrepresented languages and developers worldwide.

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We're looking for the most creative, high-impact application of Apertus within a Swiss startup, recognizing innovation, technical excellence, and real-world impact.

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SPOTLIGHT AWARD 
SEMI-FINALISTS

Spotlight Award

AlpGuard

AlpGuard is a Swiss AI governance layer for regulated organizations — using Apertus as its sovereign backbone for compliant, privacy-preserving AI routing.

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Spotlight Award

Anyway Systems

Anyway Systems turns any GPU machines into a private AI cluster in 30 minutes — paired with Apertus to deliver a fully transparent, privacy-first AI foundation.

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Spotlight Award

NativeAI Guard

NativeAI Guard protects Swiss finance and healthcare companies against AI cyberthreats — integrating Apertus into its firewall for 100% Swiss-built defense.

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Spotlight Award

Public AI Switzerland

Public AI Switzerland is a cooperative making AI affordable for all Swiss residents — operating the world's most widely used Apertus instance with democratic governance.

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Spotlight Award

Surelio.ai

Surelio provides independent AI quality assurance through red teaming and risk assessment — using Apertus as a core model in its behavioral testing platform.

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Spotlight Award

Alpimind GmbH

Alpimind builds a local AI appliance for Swiss law firms — shipping Apertus as its default model so every answer is source-traced and no data ever leaves the device.

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Spotlight Award

Botana AI

Botana AI helps farmers manage land like a financial portfolio — running its robo-advisor on Apertus so growers can optimize crops in multiple European languages.

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Spotlight Award

Noemon

Noemon builds AI that learns while it runs — applying its continual-learning technology to Apertus to extend context, cut costs, and enable private customization.

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Spotlight Award

RegCheck (by Softreg GmbH)

RegCheck simulates regulatory audits across 9 sectors and 24 EU languages — running Apertus 70B because sovereign, explainable AI is a hard regulatory requirement.

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Explore the 60 Semi-finalists of >>venture>> 2026!

Spotlight Award Timeline

October 1, 2025
Competition opens and startup plan submissions are now accepted
January 30, 2026
Submit by this date for a chance to win CHF 1000 in our Early-Bird drawing
February 25, 2026
Deadline to submit your entry and take part in the competition
April 2026
Jury 1 reviews all interested and nominated applications and selects the Top 10 semi-finalists for the award.
May 2026
The Spotlight Award jury selects the Top 3 Finalists.
June 15, 2026
Final in-person pitches by all 18 finalists, followed by the Award Ceremony at the Swisstech Convention Centre (Lausanne). Winners in each vertical, the Spotlight Award winner, the Audience Award winner, and the 2026 >>venture>> Grand Prize winner will be announced the same evening.

Ready to venture forward?

Then click on the button below to start your journey with us.

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