
Open Mineral is a Swiss-based, AI-driven metals trading firm and digital marketplace that connects miners, smelters, and traders to buy and sell physical metal raw materials - such as copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver concentrates - directly and transparently. Founded in 2017 by former Glencore traders, the company pairs a physical trading desk with proprietary data and pricing algorithms to digitize a historically opaque, relationship-driven industry, and has onboarded hundreds of mining and metals companies across dozens of countries.
Girisha Fernando is the CEO and co-founder of Lyfegen, a Basel- and Boston-based healthtech company building software that helps payers, hospitals, pharma companies and medical device makers manage value-based drug pricing, access and rebate agreements. After nearly a decade at Roche in market access, pricing and IT, he left in 2018 to build technology that ties the price of medicine to how well it actually works for patients. He splits his time between Switzerland and New York as Lyfegen pushes into the US market.
Alentis Therapeutics is a Swiss clinical-stage biotech built around a single, unusual biological target: Claudin-1 (CLDN1), a tight-junction protein that becomes exposed in both fibrotic tissue and solid tumors. Founded in 2019 on the discovery of physician-scientist Professor Thomas Baumert, the company develops first-in-class monoclonal antibodies and antibody-drug conjugates that bind exposed CLDN1 to reverse organ fibrosis and treat CLDN1-positive cancers. Headquartered in Allschwil near Basel with R&D roots in Strasbourg, Alentis has raised roughly $365 million across rounds, including a $181.4 million Series D in November 2024, and is running clinical trials for its lead antibody lixudebart (ALE.F02) and two ADCs, ALE.P02 and ALE.P03.
Classtime is a Zurich- and US-based education technology company building a web-based platform for formative and summative assessments. Teachers use it to create and grade quizzes, run collaborative challenges, and watch student understanding update in real time across any device. Founded in 2016, it serves hundreds of thousands of teachers and learners in more than 60 countries, with a free library of 30,000+ standards-aligned questions and a focus on grounding its design in learning science.
Noema Pharma is a Basel-based clinical-stage biotech building first-in-disease oral small-molecule therapeutics for central nervous system disorders. Founded in 2019 by Sofinnova Partners around four mid-stage assets in-licensed from Roche, the company targets overlooked neurological conditions - from seizures in tuberous sclerosis complex and pain in trigeminal neuralgia to Tourette syndrome and CNS-mediated symptoms of menopause. It has raised roughly CHF 130 million (about USD 147 million) in Series B financing from a syndicate including Forbion, Jeito Capital, Sofinnova, EQT Life Sciences and UPMC Enterprises.
Valentin Ruest is the co-founder and US co-CEO of Classtime, a Zurich-born edtech company building a formative and summative assessment platform used by educators and learners in more than 90 countries. A University of St. Gallen and Harvard-trained economist who once ran mortgages at a Swiss fintech, he traded banking for classrooms, splitting his life between Santa Barbara and Zurich while teaching personal finance in public schools and arguing that software should help teachers decide, not decide for them.
Stämm is a deep-tech biomanufacturing company building a desktop-scale, 3D-printed, bubble-free bioprocessor that replaces the giant stainless-steel tanks of conventional pharma. Founded in Buenos Aires and headquartered in San Francisco, the company is pursuing a vision of decentralized, AI-driven production of biologics and cell therapies.

Hermann Tribukait is the co-founder and CEO of Atinary Technologies, a Lausanne- and Silicon Valley-based deeptech startup that built SDLabs — a no-code AI/ML platform compressing years of R&D into days. A Harvard-trained economist who helped coin the term 'Self-Driving Labs®' in 2017, Tribukait has channeled a career spent brokering $200M+ in global R&D partnerships into software that lets machines design experiments, learn from results, and iterate without human bias getting in the way. Atinary's tools are now used in pharma, biotech, chemicals, and climate tech, with a physical self-driving lab open in Boston since early 2026.

Leah Tharin is a Swiss product management veteran, solopreneur, and one of the most influential voices on Product-led Growth (PLG) in B2B SaaS. With 25+ years of operator experience — scaling Smallpdf to 50M monthly active users and GotPhoto to 20M+ ARR — she left full-time employment in November 2023 to build an independent advisory and content business. Her newsletter 'Leah's ProducTea' on Substack, her podcast, and her 58,000+ LinkedIn followers have made her a go-to resource for product and growth leaders navigating the shift from sales-led to product-led business models.