Category Archives: Technology

Airrived Named Gartner Emerging Tech AI Vendor for Transforming Autonomous Security Operations with Agentic AI

DUBLIN, Calif.– Airrived, the company behind the Agentic OS, today announced it has been named by Gartner as an Emerging Tech AI Vendor in its “Emerging Tech: AI Vendor Race: Most Prominent Use Cases in Agentic AI by Industry” report (June 5, 2026). This recognition follows Airrived’s recent distinction as a twice-named Gartner Tech Innovator in Agentic AI.

Airrived was spotlighted for its Agentic OS, which enables enterprises to deploy, scale, and manage custom AI agents—positioning the company as a leader in domain-specialized agentic AI for enterprise security, IT, and business operations.

The Gartner report highlights Airrived in the use-case insight, “AI Agents Proactively Remediate IT and Security Issues to Improve Enterprise Security Posture.” The report details a case study of a global enterprise that faced mounting operational challenges across its security operations center (SOC), security engineering, and compliance functions due to disconnected tools, manual investigations, and repetitive tasks.

To overcome these hurdles and a lack of specialized AI expertise, the organization deployed Airrived’s modular, agentic AI platform. The solution unified the analyst experience by enabling conversational support across disparate systems like Splunk and CrowdStrike, while integrating prebuilt AI agents to autonomously handle incident triage, gather evidence, and execute audit questionnaires.

According to the report, “The deployment transformed operations by autonomously handling 90% of SOC alert triage and investigation activities, reducing mean time to respond (MTTR) by 80%, and automating post-incident reporting. AI agents continuously gathered and correlated evidence across security products, improving analyst productivity by 90% while significantly accelerating audit readiness. The AI-driven self-service portal also reduced security engineering ticket volume by 50%, eliminating multiday response delays. As a result, security professionals became creators of AI agents, enabling autonomous operations, scaling expertise, automating decisions, speeding compliance, and focusing on strategic risk reduction over manual tasks.”

“Being recognized by Gartner validates where the market is heading rather than a destination – from AI experimentation to true autonomous operations at scale – a massive market transformation,” said Anurag Gurtu, Co-Founder and CEO of Airrived. “Our mission is to help organizations transition from AI-assisted workflows to fully autonomous operations while maintaining governance, security, and trust.”

A Different Kind of Foundation

While much of the market remains fixated on copilots, wrappers, and orchestration layers dressed up as intelligence, Airrived is building something categorically different: the Agentic OS — a new foundational layer for the enterprise that doesn’t just assist, but executes, adapts, governs, and scales.

The Agentic OS combines fine-tuned domain models, deep reasoning, multi-agent orchestration, and policy-driven control into a single governed infrastructure. It transforms autonomous AI from experimental capability into trusted, production-grade operation. Others are enabling AI to act.

Airrived is defining how AI can be trusted to act.

At the center of this vision is AetherClaw — Airrived’s flagship security capability and the clearest expression of its mission: autonomous systems that operate across every domain of the enterprise, governed by design, and trusted by default.

Already in Production

Months after emerging from stealth in February 2026, Airrived is not a promise — it is a platform. The company is already deployed in production at some of the world’s most demanding enterprises:

• Airrived and Wisdom Technology launched Qatar sovereign cloud with Agentic AI, powering secure, intelligent operations for energy, government, and financial institutions.

• A Fortune 150 insurance company, running high-volume, mission-critical agentic workflows at enterprise scale.A global bank, with governed autonomous agents operating across regulated financial environments.

• One of the largest fast-casual restaurant chains in the world, deploying operational intelligence at scale.

• A major telecom infrastructure provider, running autonomous operations across complex, high-availability infrastructure.

These deployments are not pilots. They are proof that governed, reliable, scalable agentic intelligence is not a future capability — it is a present one.

Industry Recognition

Since emerging from stealth, Airrived has earned major recognition: 2x Gartner Tech Innovator in Agentic AI • Inc. Best Workplaces • Globee Pioneers Award “Best of Category” in AI-Powered App Development Disruptors • Cybersecurity Excellence Award, Agentic AI Platform (highest votes) • Global InfoSec Award, Most Advanced in Agentic AI • Security Today CyberSecured Award • BIG Innovator in Agentic AI • 2026 AI Excellence Award, Business Intelligence Group.

These honors are not accolades collected at a distance. They are independent validation that Airrived is delivering what the industry has long demanded: agentic AI that enterprises can actually trust.

What Comes Next

Gartner’s report makes clear that the urgent imperative for enterprises is to move beyond single-task AI toward multi-agent systems capable of orchestrating complex, cross-domain workflows at scale. The question is no longer whether agentic AI will transform the enterprise. The question is who will build the infrastructure that makes it safe to do so.

Airrived has answered that question.

Bridge Conference closes its second edition with startups shortlisted for investment talks as Jukebox Ventures joins as partner

200 delegates from the music, tech and startup worlds gathered at Petram Resort & Residences in Umag, Croatia, last month.

The second edition of Bridge Conference brought 200 delegates from the music, technology, startup, tourism and creative industries to Croatia’s Istrian coast for three days of programming, closing with a tangible result: of more than 50 startups that pitched during the conference’s accelerator programme, 11 have been shortlisted by lead partner Jukebox Ventures for further talks and potential investment.

This year’s edition was held in partnership with Jukebox Ventures, the music-focused startup accelerator and investment platform.

“I came back so inspired, there was so much talent in the room,” said Alex Jukes, Founder and CEO of Jukebox Ventures. “We’ve really built something special there for the first year of doing it as Jukebox Ventures… we’ve found 11 projects that we wanna continue further talking to and hopefully, invest further into.”

 
The programme drew senior figures from across the live and recorded music business, including Maria May (Head of Electronic, Creative Artists Agency) and Steve Hogan (Agent & Partner, WME), who opened the second day with a keynote on electronic music’s rise from underground scenes to global stages. Further sessions brought together leaders from Sziget, Boom Festival, Yourope, Sony Music Latin-Iberia, Pollstar and the International Live Music Conference.

Artificial intelligence ran throughout the programme – from “Ticketing 2.0: How AI is Revolutionizing the Ticket Journey” to “The Human Edge: Why Belonging Beats Engagement in the Age of AI,” which weighed technology’s reach against the value of authentic human connection. Other panels tackled the financial realities of building events, data-led artist development, music tourism, women’s leadership across the industry, and sustainability.

“When we launched Bridge, we hoped to create a place where the future of the industry could be shaped through real human connections,” said Dušan Kovačević, Founder and CEO of EXIT Festival Group. “This year, seeing startups pitch their ideas, investors discover new opportunities and industry leaders begin new conversations showed us that the future is already being built here.”

Held overlooking the Adriatic, the conference paired high-level sessions with networking events, gala dinners, sunset meetups and its signature La Dolce Vita evenings. Jennifer Cochrane (CEO, Getahead; Booker, EXIT Festival Group) called this year’s edition “nothing short of outstanding,” adding the team is “already looking forward to what next year will bring.”

Laser startup LITILIT Brings Femtosecond Lasers to Industrial Scale With New Vilnius Factory

Nikolajus Gavrillinas, co-founder and CEO of LITILIT. (Source: LITILIT) 

LITILIT is developing one of the highest-capacity femtosecond laser production facilities in the world, designed to reach an annual production capacity of up to 3,000 lasers within a few years of launch. The company aims to address one of the key barriers to wider femtosecond laser adoption: the need for scalable, industrially practical production.

June 17, Vilnius, Lithuania: Femtosecond laser startup LITILIT has begun developing a new large-scale femtosecond laser production facility in Vilnius, with a project value of approximately six million euros. The company plans to complete the main construction and fit-out works by the end of this year and reach annual production capacity of up to 3,000 lasers within approximately a few years of launch.

Femtosecond lasers are among the most advanced tools for high-precision material processing. Their extremely short light pulses enable highly accurate processing with minimal thermal impact and makes them suitable for a wide range of applications – from semiconductor and advanced electronics manufacturing to medical procedures such as eye surgery.

According to Nikolajus Gavrilinas, co-founder and CEO of LITILIT, one of the biggest barriers to mass femtosecond laser adoption today is that there are no ways to manufacture lasers at the scale that industry will require.

“Traditionally, femtosecond laser architectures evolved from scientific systems. They can deliver strong performance, but are often complex to assemble, difficult to automate and dependent on highly qualified specialists. Our lasers are based on a purpose-built architecture with lower component complexity, modular design and a high level of automation. This allows us to organize assembly, testing and quality control faster and more efficiently,” Gavrilinas explains.

The factory will be located in Vilnius with a business area covering 4,000 square meters. It will include two main production areas: a modern CNC metal machining shop and robotic femtosecond laser assembly and testing workshops.

The main construction and fit-out works are planned for completion in the final quarter of 2026. During its first year of operations, the factory is expected to produce up to 1,000 femtosecond lasers, with capacity set to increase to 3,000 lasers annually within the following few years. The total value of the project is expected to reach around six million euros.

Patented technology

Gavrilinas explains that the technological foundation behind LITILIT’s approach to scalable production traces back to a 2014 discovery – a fundamentally new and patented method of generating ultrashort pulses. The company has been developing the technology since it was founded in 2015 and in 2022, it raised €3.7 million from Taiwania Capital and Iron Wolf Capital to support further technology development, becoming the first company to receive investment from Taiwan’s USD 200 million CEE fund.

Based on the invention, made by LITILIT co-founder Kęstutis Regelskis at the Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC) in Vilnius, Lithuania, the company developed a patented laser architecture that enables more efficient, compact and industrially scalable femtosecond laser systems.

“Our architecture achieves around 20% electrical-to-optical femtosecond efficiency, which is a strong result for this industry. In practical terms, this means lower energy consumption, reduced cooling requirements and reliable operation in industrial environments. The same architecture also allows us to build compact and robust lasers that require no maintenance and are robust to external disturbances,” Gavrilinas says.

The Vilnius factory is designed as the first step in a broader international expansion. LITILIT plans to replicate the model in other regions together with international partners.

“Femtosecond lasers are becoming an essential tool for next-generation manufacturing, but wider adoption will depend on making the technology more accessible. With this factory, we are taking the first step toward a repeatable global production model – and we are proud to begin that journey in Lithuania, a country with a strong tradition in laser science and engineering,” Gavrilinas concludes.

Cinchy Appoints Cybersecurity Industry Veteran J.Paul Haynes as Chief Executive Officer

 Former eSentire Executive Joins Cinchy to Accelerate the Company’s Next Chapter of Trusted AI Adoption

TORONTO, ON — June 17: Cinchy today announced the appointment of J.Paul Haynes as Chief Executive Officer, bringing decades of cybersecurity leadership experience to the company as organizations increasingly seek trusted approaches to AI adoption.

Haynes joins Cinchy following a distinguished career helping build and scale some of cybersecurity’s most recognized organizations, including playing a leadership role in the growth of eSentire from an emerging startup into one of the industry’s leading Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers.

His appointment comes at a pivotal moment as enterprises struggle to safely move beyond AI experimentation and begin integrating generative AI, copilots and autonomous agents into critical business workflows.

While AI promises significant gains in productivity and acts to unlock  innovation, many organizations are discovering that existing governance and security models were not designed for systems capable of independently accessing data, interacting with enterprise applications and influencing business decisions increasingly in autonomous fashions.

Under Haynes’ leadership, Cinchy will focus on helping organizations accelerate AI adoption while maintaining the governance, security and operational oversight required to do so responsibly.

“Organizations are under tremendous pressure to move faster with AI, but they are learning they cannot sacrifice trust, security or accountability in the process,” said Haynes. “The opportunity in front of us is to help enterprises confidently embrace AI while ensuring it operates within the guardrails of their business, compliance obligations and security requirements. I believe Cinchy is uniquely positioned to solve that challenge.”

Founded on a vision of helping organizations govern access to enterprise data, Cinchy has spent years helping customers establish trusted access, visibility and control across complex environments. Today, the company is extending that governance foundation to address a new challenge: enabling trusted AI adoption at enterprise scale.

“J.Paul’s experience helping organizations navigate transformational shifts in cybersecurity makes him an ideal leader for Cinchy’s next chapter,” said Leo Casusol, Managing Director at Forgepoint, a leading U.S. cybersecurity investment firm and Cinchy investor. “His track record of scaling innovative companies, building high-performing teams and understanding the evolving security landscape will be invaluable as enterprises seek new ways to govern and secure AI.”

The appointment reflects Cinchy’s belief that trusted AI adoption is becoming the defining technology challenge of this decade.

As AI continues to take on a more active role across business workflows, Cinchy remains focused on building the governance foundation organizations need to safely scale AI adoption across enterprise systems, data and processes, while maintaining visibility, accountability and trust.

Nickel Digital Redefines The Pod Shop For The Digital Asset Age

June 17: Nickel Digital Asset Management (“Nickel”), Europe’s leading digital assets hedge fund manager, founded by alumni of Bankers Trust, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, has outlined its vision of best practice for pod shops in the digital asset space.

 Its model is focused on reducing fixed-cost drag and strengthening alignment and trust with pods anchored in higher performance fees, but with a holdback to absorb some degree of potential future drawdowns. This First Loss Deferred (FLD) capital creates a tangible alignment of incentives and avoids the asymmetric manager payout structure.

 Many of the managers come out of top-tier trading environments, ranging from established TradFi hedge funds and proprietary trading firms, to highly specialised crypto-native desks, combined with strong academic pedigrees in disciplines such as mathematics, physics, engineering and computer science. The blend of rigorous analytical training and real-world trading experience is fundamental to Nickel’s systematic, research-driven approach.

 Traditional pod shop models have often been criticised for fixed-cost drag – the burden of high management fees and sign-on bonuses that dilute returns. Nickel’s model deliberately strips away these elements, replacing them with a system built on institutional-grade rigour and genuine performance-led growth.

 In a fragmented and volatile digital asset market, Nickel believes that the hero trader model is no longer sufficient. To capture alpha across global venues, the firm exclusively funds fully systematic strategies where every stage from signal generation to execution is driven by code.

 A cornerstone of Nickel’s best practice approach is its commitment to manager autonomy and intellectual property (IP) protection. Unlike many platforms that seek to internalise signals or harvest successful strategies, Nickel’s pods remain independent by design.

 Nickel’s operational excellence is underpinned by RiskZeus, its proprietary system capturing over 100 million tick-by-tick data points every 24 hours across roughly 10,000 open positions. This technology was proven during the October 10th Flash Crash last year which saw the largest liquidation event in digital asset history, with $20 billion wiped out. While many faced collapse, Nickel’s fund protected capital and delivered one of its strongest daily returns, maintaining annualised volatility below 7%.

 Counterparty and custody risk management remain central to the platform with 94% of exposure managed via Off-Exchange Settlement (OES) solutions as of February 2026. This ensures investor assets remain secure with specialised crypto custodians like Copper and regulated banks like Sygnum acting as the custody providers.

 As of early 2026, Nickel’s trading bench includes 80 pods across 35 cities and six continents, with aggregate trading volumes exceeding $100 billion in 2025.

 Anatoly Crachilov, CEO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, explains that the platform’s success is rooted in its ability to act as a bridge between exceptional global talent and institutional capital.  “The next generation of multi-manager investing in digital assets will not be built around in-house star traders and balance-sheet-heavy platforms.” says Crachilov. “It will be built around institutional access to globally-located scarce systematic trading talent, protected intellectual property, and a powerful risk control infrastructure running on 24/7 basis.

Alek Kloda, Co-CIO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, believes that the shift toward tokenisation demands a new level of technological agility. “As digital assets mature, the velocity of market opportunities requires a 24/7, code-driven approach to both execution and risk management,” notes Kloda. “Our model empowers independent pods to act swiftly while ensuring that global risk controls are uniformly applied, bridging the gap between low-latency crypto trading and institutional safety,” he commented.

 Michael Hall, Co-CIO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, notes that the strength of Nickel Digital’s platform lies in its marriage of flexibility for the trader and discipline for the investor. “By ensuring our trading partners retain ownership of their IP, we attract the best talent, while our centralized risk architecture ensures that this creative freedom operates within strict, pre-defined parameters. This balance is crucial for achieving high Sharpe ratio strategies in a volatile market environment,” he adds.

 “We are defining the next generation of asset management, where institutional rigour meets digital agility,” concludes Crachilov. “Our commitment is to continue providing superior risk-adjusted returns for our investors, regardless of market direction.”

AMD and Rackspace Technology Sign Definitive Agreement for Phased Deployment of 30 MW of AMD AI Compute

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and SAN ANTONIO, June 17:  (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) and Rackspace Technology® (NASDAQ: RXT), a global enterprise AI infrastructure and solutions provider, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement for the phased deployment of an initial 30 MW footprint dedicated to AMD-based compute deployments across Rackspace’s global data centers beginning in late 2026 through 2028. The agreement operationalizes the Memorandum of Understanding announced May 7, 2026, and establishes AMD as a strategic technology partner at the silicon layer of Rackspace’s governed AI stack.

At full deployment, 30 MW of dedicated AMD compute across Rackspace’s footprint will represent meaningful capacity to serve regulated enterprise workloads, including healthcare providers who have expressed early interest in accelerated compute for clinical AI and inference at scale. This collaboration incorporates both AMD Instinct™ GPUs (including MI355X, MI350P, and future successor solutions) and AMD EPYC™ CPUs inside an integrated Enterprise AI Cloud architecture, enabling Rackspace to route each workload to the right compute with full accountability for performance and outcomes end to end.

“Enterprises in regulated industries need AI infrastructure that is governed from the ground up, with one operator accountable for business outcomes, not a collection of vendors each owning a piece,” said Gajen Kandiah, CEO, Rackspace Technology. “This collaboration combines the right compute with the right operating model and delivers something the market hasn’t offered before: a governed AI stack with one accountable partner from silicon to outcomes.”

“As enterprise AI evolves, customers need infrastructure that can deliver the right mix of accelerated and general-purpose compute for each workload,” said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Compute and Enterprise AI, AMD. “By bringing together leadership AMD AI compute solutions and Rackspace’s governed cloud operating model, we are helping regulated enterprises deploy high-performance AI infrastructure with the openness, scalability and accountability needed to run AI at enterprise scale.”

Both companies expect to dedicate sales and marketing resources to identify and engage enterprise customers for AMD compute-powered infrastructure, with each company committing personnel to jointly develop and pursue customer opportunities across regulated industries.

This agreement will accelerate delivery of the four integrated capabilities announced with the MOU: Enterprise AI Cloud, Enterprise Inference Engine, Inference as a Service, and Bare Metal AMD Instinct, offering a complete, governed stack from bare metal compute through fully operated inference. Together, the companies aim to establish a new category of managed enterprise AI infrastructure that offers enterprises an alternative to the bare metal model. The shift from AI experiments to agentic workflows running inside core enterprise systems is accelerating demand for exactly the kind of governed, accountable infrastructure this collaboration is built to deliver.

EbixCash expands phygital network as assisted digital transactions surge in non-metro India

New Delhi | June 17: EbixCash World Money, a flagship subsidiary of Eraaya Lifespaces Limited, today announced the expansion of its payments, remittance and forex network to 2,250 Indian cities/town/villages, up from 2,143 a year ago. The expansion adds over 573 new retail touchpoints, with 89% of new merchant additions coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns.

The newly added network spans key regional clusters including Punjab and Kerala, where remittance-led transactions continue to anchor demand, as well as Gurgaon and Pune, which are seeing increased activity across SME payments and outbound forex usage. Southern markets such as Chennai, Bengaluru, and Coimbatore are witnessing stronger adoption of hybrid payment models that combine digital interfaces with assisted service delivery.

Neighbourhood retail points are emerging as critical financial access hubs. Kirana stores and local outlets are enabling use cases ranging from assisted remittances for migrant workers to everyday payment acceptance for small businesses, while also supporting first-time users as they enter formal digital financial systems. Unlike metros, where usage is largely app-driven, these markets continue to rely on assisted journeys, particularly for higher-value or more complex transactions.

Commenting on the development, Mr. T. C. Guruprasad, CEO & Managing Director – Payments Solutions, EbixCash, said, “The next phase of digital transaction growth is being led by non-metro India, but the path to adoption here is structurally different. Assisted models are playing a critical role in building trust and enabling usage, especially for more complex financial needs like remittances and forex. Our network is designed to leverage local retail infrastructure as the interface for digital services, allowing us to scale access while staying relevant to how these markets transact.”

Vikas Garg, Chairman, Ebix Group, added, “In a market as diverse as India, distribution will continue to be a key differentiator in financial services. Digital alone cannot address the last mile at scale, particularly in emerging markets. The ability to integrate physical infrastructure with digital capabilities will define how effectively companies can build trust, drive usage, and scale sustainably across the next phase of growth.”

Looking ahead, the company plans to further expand its presence across emerging markets, with a continued focus on strengthening merchant access, scaling cross-border payment capabilities, and deepening its forex and transaction-led service offerings across India’s regional economies.

Switzerland extends its lead in the technologies reshaping the global economy 

ZURICH / PARIS, June 17. The technologies now driving the global economy, from advanced computing to artificial intelligence and robotics, are built patiently, over decades of sustained investment and deep scientific groundwork. Increasingly that work traces back to a country a fraction of the size of the giants it competes with. 

Switzerland now directs a greater share of its venture capital to deep tech than any other nation, and commits more per head than any country in Europe, placing it among the top three worldwide. The finding anchors the Swiss Deep Tech Report 2026, published today by Deep Tech Nation Switzerland, Founderful, Kickfund, Startupticker.ch, and Dealroom.co, and launched at VivaTech in Paris. 

The report sets out where the next decade of frontier technology will be engineered. The world’s most valuable companies are built on data centers, artificial intelligence and robotic automation, and Switzerland is among the few countries worldwide where that work is researched and commercialized at the frontier. What has changed is that its companies now stay to scale, and the world has taken notice. “For the first time, the companies spinning out of ETH and EPFL are staying, scaling and attracting serious capital,” says Jean-Philippe Fricker, Co-Founder and Chief System Architect of Cerebras Systems. The country’s international standing now matches the strength of its ecosystem. 

Five findings that put Switzerland at the forefront of deep tech innovation

The pipeline is shifting toward the sectors that dominate global capital. AI and machine learning now account for one in four newly founded Swiss deep tech companies, more than double their previous share. Beyond startup creation, Switzerland has the highest density of AI researchers globally, twice that of the UK and the US. Robotics is moving even faster relative to peers: Switzerland has created 3.5 times more venture-backed robotics startups per capita since 2020 than the United States, and 5 times more than the UK. In Future of Compute, 2026 is already a record funding year, and Switzerland boasts 7 times more patents per capita than the European average, driven by its world-leading microelectronics and high-precision sensor industries. 

The world’s most deep-tech-focused venture market. 63% of all Swiss venture capital flows to deep tech, the highest share of any country, ahead of China and the United States and nearly double the share of Germany and the UK, and well ahead of France. 

First in Europe on intensity, top three globally. At $1,470 invested per capita, Switzerland commits more to deep tech per head than any country in Europe. Worldwide, that places it among the top three nations alongside Israel and the United States. 

Funding is accelerating. Swiss deep tech funding has grown roughly fivefold since 2015 to reach a record $2.6B in 2025. 

The strongest growth is still ahead. ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne are Europe’s leading universities for new deep tech spinouts. Building on a leading position, the two have extended their lead since 2023, and that cohort is only now reaching the seed-to-Series-A window, the stage at which company value and capital raised compound most sharply. 

Momentum on the ground 

Some of the clearest signals do not yet appear in the funding data. Among the report’s co-authors are several of the country’s most active deep tech investors, who describe a change in the character of the ecosystem over the past year. The world’s top funds no longer need persuading to look at Switzerland; they are arriving on their own initiative. “The energy and talent dynamism reminded me of what we saw in Israel and the UK in the early 2000s,” says Saul Klein, Founding Partner of LocalGlobe. 

Global technology leaders are expanding their computing, robotics and AI research presence in the country. The pipeline feeding that activity runs straight from the universities. “At EPFL we see it every day: the discoveries made in our laboratories become the deep tech companies of tomorrow,” says Anna Fontcuberta i Morral, President of EPFL. And as deal flow deepens, founders are growing more selective about the investors they choose to work with. 

“Since we launched in 2019, we’ve never seen such a high density of ambitious entrepreneurs tackling globally relevant tech challenges as right now. The pace at which these founders execute reminds me of what people speak about when they refer to SF. In the coming decade Zurich will become home to at least a dozen global category leaders, I’m sure of that.”

— Alex Stöckl, Partner at Founderful and Swiss Deep Tech Report co-author

Where the opportunity sits 

Foreign investors supply 88% of Swiss deep tech funding at rounds of $100M and above, against 75% across Europe, while domestic capital falls to just 12% at late stage. In a top-ranked ecosystem, late-stage capital remains underweight relative to the quality of the companies being built, leaving clear room for new investors to enter early. 

“We built one of the world’s most deep tech-focused economies without a franc of public venture capital. In Germany, France and the UK, much of the late-stage money is state-backed through Bpifrance, British Patient Capital or the German Future Fund. In Switzerland that barely exists, and yet the world’s best investors now come here on their own initiative, with some setting up shop. No public money had to write the cheque to make this real.” 

— Wanja Humanes, Partner at Kickfund and Swiss Deep Tech Report co-author 

What happens next 

The seed-to-Series-A cohort now moving through the ecosystem is the largest Switzerland has produced, and it is only now reaching the stage where company value and capital raised compound most sharply. Deep tech funding has already grown roughly fivefold since 2015 to a record $2.6B. The companies are staying, and the funds are arriving on their own. The report sets out, sector by sector, the leaders and the startups most worth watching, and invites the investors who would rather arrive early than late. 

Plaud Scales From dollar 1M to 100M ARR Within Two Years, Bringing AI Beyond the Screen for Professionals

Among the fastest-known AI companies, Plaud stands out as a rare hardware-enabled AI company in a cohort dominated by software-only players

SAN FRANCISCO,  June 17: Plaud, the company building real-world AI interface for professionals, today announced it has scaled from $1M to $100M in ARR within two years, placing it among the fastest AI companies globally to reach the milestone. Plaud is the only hardware-enabled AI company in a cohort otherwise dominated by software-only players, and now serves more than 2 million professionals across 170+ countries.

The fastest AI growth stories have, until now, belonged almost entirely to software-native companies: AI coding tools, enterprise workflow agents, and other SaaS products scaling behind screens and keyboards. Plaud’s growth represents a different model — recurring AI software scaled through a real-world physical interface, with devices (Plaud Note, Plaud Note Pro, Plaud NotePin S) acting as the entry point into human conversations, capturing the upstream, lossless, source-of-truth context.

Most AI today operates after the fact, on summaries, documents, prompts typed from memory. The intelligence that actually drives decisions comes from real-world conversations, before any prompt is written, before any keyboard is touched. When conversation fades, that intelligence decays. Not just information — intent, nuance, the reasoning behind decisions. Plaud is the post-screen, post-smartphone interface built to capture it at the rawest form.

“Most AI companies have scaled through software behind a screen. We took a different path.” said Nathan Xu, co-founder and CEO of Plaud. “The conversations that actually move things forward don’t happen on a keyboard. We built the interface for the post-screen world. And the market validated it.”

As AI moves from screen-based tools toward interfaces and agents that need trusted context to act reliably, real-world conversations are becoming a critical data layer. Plaud is also expanding beyond individual note-taking into team and developer workflows. Plaud Team brings conversation intelligence into collaborative work, while MCP and workflow integrations allow Plaud to connect with the broader agent ecosystem — turning meetings, calls, and in-person conversations into follow-ups, shared knowledge, and actions across the tools professionals already use.

ITS America Conference & Expo 2026 Delivers Record Innovation and Landmark Celebration in Detroit

More than 3,000 industry leaders gather in the Motor City to advance intelligent transportation 

DETROIT, Mich. June 17: The ITS America Conference & Expo 2026 brought breakthrough technologies and real-world solutions to Detroit, drawing more than 3,000 industry professionals from 46 states, and the District of Columbia together to advance safer, smarter, and more connected mobility worldwide. Organized in partnership by RX Global and ITS America, the four-day event at Huntington Place united the industry’s most forward-thinking companies and global leaders around solutions spanning artificial intelligence, connected transportation, cybersecurity, data analytics, digital infrastructure, and autonomous vehicles. 

This year’s conference, themed “Empowering Innovation,” featured more than 100 conference sessions spanning four days, 25 live demonstrations, 170+ exhibitors and sponsors, and an unprecedented outdoor demonstration program that placed attendees directly inside Detroit’s connected transportation corridors. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer helped wrap up the conference with closing remarks, then met with industry leaders and Clinton High School STEM students on the exhibit hall floor. 

Detroit served as more than a backdrop. As the birthplace of American automotive manufacturing and home to 1.7 million vehicles produced annually, the city gave the intelligent transportation community a living laboratory to showcase how the industry’s most advanced technologies are being deployed on real roads, in real time. From the 45-mile I-94 Freeway Experience connecting downtown Detroit to Ann Arbor, to the four-mile M-1 Intelligent Woodward Experience featuring 31 vehicle-to-everything (V2X)-equipped intersections and autonomous vehicle shuttles, attendees experienced the full potential of connected transportation firsthand.

“The technologies on display here, including AI-powered traffic management and V2X-connected corridors, represent the very innovation our industry has championed for decades,” said Laura Chace, President and CEO of ITS America. “What we witnessed in Detroit shows that bringing people from across public, private, and research sectors together builds lasting partnerships and leads to safer, smarter, and more connected transportation.”

The conference program brought national leaders to center stage for two landmark plenary sessions. On June 10, Sean McMaster, Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration at the U.S. Department of Transportation, joined public and private sector leaders to reflect on the industry’s 35-year evolution and chart the course for the next generation of mobility. On June, 11, Miovision sponsored a plenary session, led by Laura Chace and Kurtis McBride, CEO and Co-founder of Miovision, featuring key transportation executives and focused on turning bold ideas into measurable real-world outcomes. State DOT roundtables also provided transportation leaders with a dedicated platform to exchange implementation strategies and share lessons learned from the field.

“ITS America Conference & Expo 2026 delivered an experience unlike any other,” said Jaime McAuley, Event Vice President, ITS America Events, RX Global. “The demonstration program in Detroit set a new standard, reaching far beyond the show floor and into the city itself. Connecting the ITS community to real, deployed technology along Detroit’s most iconic corridors gave every attendee something they could not experience anywhere else.”

The 2026 show floor introduced two new dedicated zones that reflected the industry’s most urgent priorities. The inaugural ITS StartUps Zone gave emerging transportation companies a platform alongside the industry’s most established players, connecting new voices in the sector with the agencies, investors, and partners needed to advance their technologies from concept to deployment. 

The new Cybersecurity & Data Zone brought together 10 exhibitors, including Palo Alto Networks, Google, and 360 Network Solutions, LLC, delivering hands-on workshops, cutting-edge solutions, and expert sessions focused on protecting connected vehicles, securing smart infrastructure, and strengthening the resilience of transportation systems nationwide. 

To demonstrate the benefits of using drone technology to deliver supplies to emergency responders, Blueflite staged a series of deliveries at the outdoor demo area. ITS America President and CEO Laura Chace, U.S. DOT representatives, Michigan DOT and ITS Michigan received deliveries of hats and koozies, and ITS Korea and the Korean Delegation received invitations to ITS World Congress 2026.

“As a former chair of ITS America, I know firsthand what this event means to the transportation community, and hosting it in Utah is something we take seriously,” said Carlos Braceras, Commissioner of the Utah Department of Transportation. “Salt Lake City is a city that embraces bold ideas, and the Salt Palace Convention Center will give transportation leaders from around the world the stage they need to share the technologies and solutions shaping the next generation of mobility. We cannot wait to see you in April 2027.” 

The Future Leaders Program, sponsored by Southwest Research Institute, challenged students and young professionals to explore artificial intelligence’s role in transforming transportation, connecting rising talent directly with industry pioneers throughout the four-day event.