The telling detail in Tenity’s story is an investment certificate. Julius Baer wanted to digitise the way actively managed certificates were administered. A startup called vestr had the technical team. The bank had the financial expertise. F10, the organisation now called Tenity, provided a place for the two to meet. Their collaboration produced a platform for managing those certificates. In a business fond of talking about disruption, this was an unusually concrete proposition: take an existing job and make it easier to do.
The story in three moves
- Tenity backs fintech founders and runs innovation programs for institutions.
- Its advantage is connecting investment with potential customers and practical testing.
- The useful outcome is a working relationship that survives the accelerator.
That small transaction between institutional knowledge and startup software explains the larger company. Tenity operates where a promising technology encounters a difficult customer: a bank, insurer or other organisation with systems, rules and responsibilities that cannot simply be wished away. Its business is helping both sides get far enough into the same problem to decide whether they should work together.
01 / Born inside the buyer
Tenity began in 2015 as an initiative inside SIX, the Swiss financial infrastructure group. Co-founder and CEO Andreas Iten had seen the problem from the incumbent’s side. In his retrospective account, financial companies struggled to turn innovation spending into measurable results. When a product project needed a different approach, his team built a platform connecting institutions with startups. F10 emerged from that effort.
The origin matters. Financial institutions were part of the setting from the beginning. The question was how outside expertise could become useful to them. Over time, the organisation added investment to its work connecting founders and corporates. The Tenity name arrived publicly in February 2023, giving an increasingly international operation an identity beyond F10.
02 / Two businesses, one introduction
Today there are two connected businesses. One invests in startups. The other designs and runs innovation work for corporates and governments: scouting companies, explaining emerging markets, organising accelerators and hackathons, and helping execute pilots. Founders want money, expertise and customers. Institutions want a manageable way to find and test technology. Investors want access to companies early enough to participate in their growth.
Those interests can reinforce each other. A corporate partner may become a startup customer and an investor in a Tenity fund. Julius Baer illustrates that overlap. Tenity’s 2023 incubation fund closing also attracted SIX, UBS Next and Generali’s Swiss insurtech unit. Each relationship gives the network another reason to keep working after the pitch event ends.
How the connection earns its keep
An editorial view of the collaboration process, not a promise of conversion.
This places Tenity between several familiar alternatives: a venture fund, a startup accelerator, an innovation consultancy and an institution’s own internal team. Its distinction is the combination of those functions around financial services. The relevant expertise includes regulation, institutional workflows and local market conditions, alongside product development and fundraising. An introduction is more useful when the introducer understands why the buyer might hesitate.
The corporate programs make the offer tangible. HackZone by Allianz Türkiye connects startups with insurance specialists and Allianz APIs. Its published offering includes 400,000 Turkish lira of non-equity proof-of-concept support for successful integrations. The Visa Innovation Program Europe works on a different institutional doorway: helping fintechs validate solutions, explore payment capabilities and establish commercial partnerships across markets. Neither arrangement makes a customer inevitable. Both give the startup a defined setting in which to find out whether its technology solves a problem someone cares enough to pursue.
03 / Read the cheque’s small print
The numbers need dates attached. A December 2023 explanation of Tenity’s fund described initial incubation investments of CHF50,000, €50,000 or S$70,000 for a 2.5% stake. For a founder, the cost was ownership. That historical offer should not be mistaken for a permanent price attached to every program.
European accelerator, August 2025. About 2.3% selected; this measures selection, not startup success.
The European accelerator announced in August 2025 offered up to €300,000 per startup, four months of support and four in-person masterclass weeks. Its ten companies were selected from 433 applications. The Singapore autumn cohort advertised up to S$450,000 per startup. Meanwhile, Tenity’s current venture page lists initial tickets of $100,000 to $1.5 million, covering pre-seed through Series A+.
These are different offers. “Up to” is a ceiling. A founder should compare the actual investment instrument, equity consequences, time commitment and relevant customer access. The business model combines corporate innovation engagements with venture investment; its economics cannot be understood from an accelerator cheque alone.
04 / The pilot needs an owner
The vestr example contains a useful instruction for anyone trying to copy the approach. Start with a task the institution already understands. Bring its domain experts into the work. Give the startup access to people who can help define a usable product. In vestr’s own account, Julius Baer committed financial and human resources and stayed involved. The relationship had substance on both sides.
“It is a bit of a laboratory for us”
Luigi Vignola, Head of Markets, Julius Baer
The corresponding limitation is practical. A network cannot supply an institution’s willingness to act. If a pilot has no responsible business team, no resources or no plausible route into use, additional introductions are unlikely to fix it. That is the implication of the collaboration model. It also explains why Tenity’s work extends beyond selecting startups to designing the engagement around them.
05 / The next customer is still an institution
Tenity’s recent activity follows that logic into AI and digital assets. In June 2026, it joined infinity.swiss’s $3 million funding round for accounting automation. In August, KPMG Switzerland became an Innovation Partner, with initial areas including compliance, AI workflows, cybersecurity and digital identity. September brought former Partners Group executive Felix Haldner onto Tenity’s board.
Those moves connect new technology with familiar institutional needs: operating expertise, implementation and governance. For a founder, the practical entry points are Tenity’s funding route and relevant programs. For a corporate team, they are scouting, testing and collaboration services. The question to bring to either conversation is specific: what job needs doing, and who will use the result? Tenity’s most persuasive story begins there, with a bank’s problem and a startup ready to work on it.