The Greater Zurich Area has recorded another significant improvement in the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2024, in which it is referred to simply as Zurich. After making the biggest leap up the rankings of any start-up ecosystem around the world from 46th to 36th place last year, Zurich is now one of the two European start-up ecosystems to have made the greatest progress in the current report, jumping a further five places to 31st position in the process. As such, the Greater Zurich Area offers Europe’s sixth most attractive environment for start-ups.
As the editor of the report, the global consulting firm Startup Genome, writes, Zurich recorded five major exits in the 30 months up to the end of 2023. This is sufficient to secure 8th place among European ecosystems. The fact that Zurich is a global financial center is also reflected in some of its recent exits, including that of Crypto Finance, which was acquired for a sum of 280 million US dollars by the Deutsche Börse Group in 2021, while SecurionPay, a mobile payments start-up, was acquired for 125 million US dollars in 2022.
However, as the report states further, Zurich also boasts an emerging life sciences ecosystem. This is shown by two Series A financing rounds in 2023. First, LimmaTech Biologics AG from Schlieren in the canton of Zurich successfully secured financing in the amount of 40 million US dollars, while second, the Artificial Intelligence start-up Laza Medical raised 36 million US dollars.
Across the period from 2021 to 2023, the estimated value of the Zurich ecosystem stands at 45.94 million US dollars. For this, it receives a score of four out of ten possible points in the report. In the Start-Up Success category, Zurich scores six points, which is only bettered by regions that place significantly higher on a global basis, and only by London (2nd place) and Stockholm (23rd place) when it comes to Europe specifically.
Silicon Valley continues to top the rankings, ahead of London and New York City, which are ranked joint second. Thereafter, Tel Aviv and Los Angeles take a share of fourth place. The report is based on data from 4.5 million start-ups located in 300 global ecosystems. ce/mm
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