Swiss DeepTech Wave Hits Tokyo: 10 Game-Changing Startups Pitching at SusHi Tech 2026

Session: SwissTech at SusHi Tech Startup Pitch 2026

Introduction: The Swiss Innovation Powerhouse Arrives in Japan

At the prestigious SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026, Switzerland made a resounding statement. Switzerland, whose Swisstech Pavilion won the prestigious "The Most Innovative Pavilion" Award at SusHi Tech Tokyo 2025, continues to showcase its peerless creative momentum. Following this milestone, the Swiss startup delegation actively expanded to Osaka during the Expo 2025 year, holding high-profile pitch events at the Swiss Pavilion of the Osaka-Kansai Expo and other regional hubs to connect with Kansai-based investors and industry leaders. Guided by Swissnex in Japan—the country’s bilateral science consulate bridging Switzerland and Japan—a highly curated cohort of ten cutting-edge Swiss startups pitched their breakthrough technologies. Switzerland has maintained its position as the world's number one in innovation for 15 consecutive years.

According to Dr. Felix Moesner, CEO of Swissnex in Japan and Science Consul, Switzerland’s strength lies in a robust university pipeline that excels at turning academic patents into high-growth commercial ventures.

"A recent example is a six-year-old Swiss startup acquired by a Japanese pharmaceutical company for $1.2 billion, automatically minting a new unicorn," Dr. Moesner highlighted. With Japan ranking as the third most-desired destination for Swiss entrepreneurs globally, the SusHi Tech Tokyo platform served as a prime catalyst for bilateral market expansion.

1. AckTao: Revolutionizing Cybersecurity Education Through Immersive Gaming

• Speaker: Cécile Maye

• Core Technology: Immersive, adaptive, and interactive gamified cyber security education platform.

• Target Market: Corporate enterprises, senior executives, and government organizations.

• Market Traction: Already generated 1M CHF in Switzerland through government, academic, and major foundation pilots.

• Japanese Market Goal: Seeking Japanese development and strategic partners to localize simulation scenarios.

AckTao is transforming mundane corporate compliance into high-engagement interactive training. By targeting executive-level and next-generation staff, the platform creates realistic cyber-crisis simulations that adapt in real time to the user’s choices. AckTao is currently preparing for its major commercial launch at the end of the year and invites Japanese enterprises to co-create localized training environments.

2. AVAtronics: Next-Gen Edge AI Noise Cancellation (10x Quieter, Zero Hardware)

• Speaker: Jeyran Hezaveh (Co-Founder & CEO)

• Core Technology: Software-only Edge AI and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) for acoustic noise clipping and denoising.

• Applications: Consumer headphones, hearing aids, military headsets, mining protection, and in-seat headrests for transit.

• Market Traction: Licensed to semiconductor manufacturers and major transit players (including Japanese companies).

AVAtronics tackles the ultimate acoustic challenge: canceling unpredictable sounds like a crying baby on an airplane. Their embedded software upgrade makes environments 10 times quieter without requiring any additional hardware. AVAtronics is integrating its technology directly into the seats of cars, airplanes, and trains, allowing passengers to enjoy silence without wearing headphones. Products powered by AVAtronics will hit the global market before the end of 2026.

3. BeEmotion.ai: Teaching Machines to Read Human Behaviors visually

• Speaker: Colin Mason

• Core Technology: Computer vision-based human behavioral and emotional analytics models.

• Key Case Studies: Panasonic's companion robot "Nicobo", flight simulator training systems ("Aeromind"), in-cabin automotive driver monitoring, and non-communicative pain check systems.

Over 60% of human communication is visual rather than verbal. BeEmotion.ai empowers machines to dynamically understand these silent cues. Their featured product, Aeromind, introduces human behavioral analytics into flight simulators. By measuring pilots' facial muscle cues and physical posture under high stress, Aeromind generates objective data that helps flight instructors debrief pilot actions through the "mirror effect." This tool transforms subjective learning into a measurable science.

4. CYSEC / Joey: Silicon-Level Confidential Computing & Data-in-Use Encryption

• Speaker: Nagib Aouini (CEO)

• Core Technology: Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) accelerated via physical silicon ("Trust Core FHE").

• Strategic Partners: Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, ServiceNow.

• Market Traction: Met $4M in revenue last year; targeting $15M in '26/'27 with a trajectory toward $100M.

Standard cloud infrastructure encrypts data at rest and in transit, but leaves it highly vulnerable when actually processed in memory. CYSEC (under its product brand Joey) solves this with Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). Utilizing their proprietary "Trust Core" silicon chip acceleration, CYSEC allows heavy machine learning and medical imaging algorithms (like CT scan analysis) to process sensitive records at 96% to 97% accuracy while the data remains fully encrypted throughout the process.

5. ESG Explorer: Unifying Daily Business Operations and Real-Time CO2 Trade-offs

• Speaker: Dirk Hermans

• Core Technology: AI matching algorithms connecting operational enterprise data with certified ESG emission factors.

• Differentiating Factor: Provides real-time activity-level decision support (e.g., during procurement), unlike traditional historical compliance reporting tools.

• Target Market: Manufacturing and retail companies.

Traditional sustainability tools only generate historical carbon reports months after business decisions have already been executed. ESG Explorer changes this paradigm by creating a real-time digital twin of company activities. At the exact moment of purchase or logistics planning, the platform calculates the immediate trade-offs between cost, lead time, and CO2 emissions, allowing teams to balance sustainability with financial success dynamically.

6. Jaipur Robotics: Deep Learning Software Targeting Bulky Waste Contamination

• Speaker: Ermes Zamboni (CEO & Co-Founder)

• Core Technology: High-precision computer vision software for waste classification and robotic automation in heavy industries.

• Key Challenge Addressed: Industrial downtime caused by concrete, gas cylinders, and lithium batteries in waste-to-energy and cement plants.

• Funding Status: Currently raising a Seed round of 4 million CHF (already oversubscribed).

Bulky industrial waste processing is highly prone to operational disasters; a single waste facility in the Netherlands lost 65 million Euros in a year due to gas cylinder explosions. Jaipur Robotics (an EPFL alumnus) has developed an AI software layer that acts as the brain for massive waste plants. By mounting camera networks above sorting pits and bulk trucks, their deep learning algorithms immediately detect dangerous contaminants and autonomously direct robotic cranes to remove them, completely automating bulk waste intelligence.

7. Kido Dynamics: Unleashing Telecom-Grade Location Intelligence with Spend Layers

• Speaker: Alberto Hernando (CEO)

• Core Technology: Deep analytics leveraging anonymized telecom antenna signals and transaction spend data.

• Case Studies: Managing overtourism in Ibiza, Mallorca, and São Paulo; traffic optimization for public transit; retail venue planning.

• Funding Round: Raising $5 million Series A.

While many companies analyze location data, Kido Dynamics establishes the ground truth of human mobility. By processing aggregated, privacy-by-design telecom data, Kido Dynamics measures real-time human movement at scale. To add commercial depth, they integrate transaction layers from Mastercard, mapping precisely how much, where, and on what tourists and shoppers spend. Major global clients like Uber and out-of-home advertising giant JCDecaux already rely on Kido’s location analytics engine.

8. NovoViz: High-Speed Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) Hardware Sensors

• Speaker: Andrada Muntean (CEO & Co-Founder)

• Core Technology: Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) silicon imaging platform.

• Disruptive Innovation: Shrinking expensive, $70k USD room-sized laboratory electronics into a 3x3x3 cm camera cube, reducing system costs by 20 times.

• Proven Reliability: Sensor successfully launched to space in March 2025, operating under extreme radiation, vibration, and vacuum conditions.

Standard CMOS sensors fail under low-light or high-speed industrial environments. NovoViz’s SPAD sensors can track and time individual light particles (photons) with unparalleled precision. The company's unique innovation lies in moving complex electronics directly into the silicon sensor chip, enabling low-cost, ultra-compact (3cm³), and high-durability optical detection. Their newest shortwave infrared (SWIR) sensors can capture invisible phenomena through heavy fog, smoke, and industrial haze.

9. REOR20: Teaching Computational Fluid Dynamics to AI for Real-Time Flood Prediction

• Speaker: David Schenkel (Head of Product)

• Core Technology: AI flood engine ("Deep Water") trained on complex Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

• Resolution: Provides hyper-local, minute-by-minute dynamic flooding paths down to individual property and street levels.

• Market Traction: Live across Australia, proving vital during recent hurricanes and monsoons.

Traditional flood warnings cover huge regions, leaving businesses and citizens blind to their specific, localized risk. High-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is highly accurate but too slow and costly, requiring massive supercomputers. REOR20 has bypassed this computing bottleneck by teaching CFD to an AI engine named "Deep Water". Utilizing only topography and weather forecasts, Deep Water can calculate the exact flood path of entire metropolitan areas (like Brisbane, Australia) within a single minute on inexpensive hardware, forecasting precisely where and when floods will hit down to the property line.

10. REM Analytics: Ultra-Targeted, Clinically Proven Microbiome Diagnostics

• Speaker: Paulo Reffineti (CEO & Co-Founder)

• Core Technology: Targeted testing of highly essential microbes rather than massive, noisy whole-genome sequencing.

• Applications: Women's reproductive health, mental wellness, and revolutionary early-autism screening.

• Major Clinical Success: Proven predictive indicators for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) success rates and early autism detection in infants as young as 3 months.

Most microbiome startups use whole-genome sequencing to map thousands of microbes, resulting in cluttered and often uninterpretable data. REM Analytics takes a contrarian approach: measuring only the core "essential" microbes critical to human bodily function. This precision-focused technique delivers rapid, clinically actionable results. At SusHi Tech 2026, the company unveiled their newest concept, "Elements of Health", a solution mapping the vaginal and gut microbiome to prescribe tailored nutrition, probiotic integration, and groundbreaking neurological developmental screenings for infants.

Conclusion: A Seamless Gateway to Collaborative Bilateral Growth

The SwissTech delegation at SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 proved that Swiss technology is uniquely positioned to address some of Japan’s most urgent corporate, societal, and environmental challenges—from extreme weather mitigation to cybersecurity hardening and cutting-edge advanced manufacturing. With Swissnex in Japan as a direct bilateral conduit, these high-growth enterprises are ready to collaborate, license, and co-innovate alongside Japan's world-leading corporate network.