Innovationsfonds details fresh financing for early-stage startups in 2025 annual report
Alternative Bank Schweiz’s Innovationsfonds has outlined a new round of early-stage financing for 2025, backing startups in cleantech, food and health with a mix of loans and equity, according to its newly published annual report. Four companies received new loans, two saw existing financing increased, and two startups were supported with equity.
The Langenbruck (BL)-based association, founded by Alternative Bank Schweiz in 1997, targets young companies in their founding and early growth phases, particularly projects that contribute to a sustainable social and environmental model and align with the bank’s values.
Its funding comes from ABS contributions as well as earnings and repayments from existing commitments. The fund focuses on ventures considered too risky for pure bank financing but with viable structures and convincing ideas, offering either equity participations or loans.
Among the new loan recipients, Terrabloc of Geneva (founded 2011) secured CHF 100,000 to expand technical support in German-speaking Switzerland. The company presses earth-rich excavated material into compressed earth blocks, creating a low-carbon building material, and is scaling industrial production with concrete plants in Vaud and Lucerne.
Zurich-based Toolbike (2021) received CHF 100,000 for its compact, cargo-capable everyday bicycle, the Monopole, designed in Switzerland and produced in France with predominantly European components. The company pursues a modular approach so its e-bikes can be repurposed as city bikes after several years without the motor and battery.
Social Ecosystems in Zurich (2020) was granted CHF 50,000 to pre-finance coffee harvests. The company sources from cooperatives in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Kenya, with processing and packaging carried out in Kenya by small and mid-sized roasters to create local jobs.
It had already received CHF 100,000 the previous year. OOMNIUM, a Zurich platform founded in 2019 that supports startups with crowdinvesting and access to a broad base of private investors, obtained a CHF 150,000 loan. Two existing loan recipients saw their financing increased.
Field Food in Zurich (2022), producer of EggField Aquafaba — a plant-based egg alternative for the food industry and gastronomy derived from processed legume cooking water — had last year’s CHF 150,000 loan topped up by CHF 50,000.
Upwater (Zurich, 2022), which measures greenhouse gas emissions from outdoor wastewater treatment and develops optimizations for aeration of treatment tanks — including tackling nitrous oxide, which is up to 300 times more climate-impacting than carbon dioxide — had its 2024 loan of CHF 75,000 increased by CHF 140,000.
The fund also provided equity to two startups that had received loans the previous year. The report underscores the fund’s mandate to channel capital into early-stage ventures aligned with sustainable development, using a mix of debt and equity to bridge financing gaps for credible but higher-risk companies.