Funding for privately traded Swiss biotechs hit a new high last year, climbing 38% to 1.15 billion Swiss francs ($1.5 billion). However, a relatively small pool of companies drove the funding jump while many of their peers raised nothing, echoing the global gap between the haves and have-nots.
Private funding for Swiss biotechs rose for the third year in a row, according to a report that the Swiss Biotech Association (SBA) created with collaborators including EY. The latest increase marked the second consecutive year of record private funding. Last year’s private funding haul topped the 833 million Swiss francs raised in 2024 and knocked the 817 million Swiss francs biotechs pocketed in 2021 down to third place.
Windward Bio and GlycoEra drove the private funding growth, raising 186 million and 104 million Swiss francs, respectively. Investors, including Novo Holdings, backed Windward to develop a rival to Amgen and AstraZeneca’s Tezspire, while GlycoEra secured cash to treat autoimmune diseases.
Fellow Swiss biotechs Orbis Medicines, Nuclidium and Rhygaze each raised between 78 million and 84 million Swiss francs. Collectively, the biotechs behind the five largest private Swiss financings of last year raised 531 million Swiss francs, 46% of the industry total.
Relatively few companies benefited from the uptick in private investment, with many biotechs receiving little or no funding in 2025, SBA said in the report. However, the proportion of funding accounted for by the five largest rounds fell last year.
In 2023 and 2024, the top-five rounds accounted for about 58% of all private biotech funding. Excluding the five largest rounds, Swiss companies raised 619 million Swiss francs in private financings last year, more than all biotechs in the country raised privately in 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2022.
Funding for public biotechs fell 16% to 1.4 billion Swiss francs last year. The decline ended the recovery in public funding seen in 2023 and 2024, when the sector began to climb back toward the amount raised in the twin pandemic-era peaks of 2020 and 2021. Private rounds accounted for 45% of all funds raised by Swiss biotechs in 2025, up from about 30% in previous years.
The mixed figures come as the Swiss city Basel tries to establish itself as a global biotech hub. Efforts to achieve that goal could be hindered by wider forces, with the Swiss National Science Foundation warning that government budget cuts risk “driving talented scientists abroad or out of research altogether.” At the same time, proposals to cap the Swiss population threaten to curb the influx of talent from overseas.
