SIX VC Arm Looks for Switzerland’s Next Fintech Rockstars

SIX Fintech Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of SIX Group, is seeking high-potential global fintech startups looking to become leaders in their fields and conquer the Swiss financial sector.

Maximilian Spelmeyer

The CHF 50 million investment arm, which currently counts six fintech companies in its portfolio, is looking to invest in 20 to 30 early-stage fintech startups with a participation that typically ranges between CHF 300,000 to CHF 2 million in the first round, Maximilian Spelmeyer, senior investment manager, told Fintech News Switzerland.

In particular, SIX Fintech Ventures is interested in highly scalable, early-stage (Seed to Series A) startups relevant for the Swiss financial center in a mid- to long-term perspective that make use of cutting-edge technologies, with new business models and solutions and which offer a “superb customer experience.”

SIX Fintech Ventures considers startups across all verticals of the financial industry though it does focus on retail banking, corporate and investment banking, asset management and private banking. The team invests along three thematic layers. First, solutions in daily commerce and transactions, which allow seamless invisible transactions embedded into everyday digital life ecosystem journeys.

Second, along the layer of insights and relationships, enabling perfect personalized digital advice and unique insights from data. Finally, low-touch B2B infrastructure solutions, which are heavily automated and efficient with low costs. Tech-wise, the fund is particularly interested in applications that leverage artificial intelligence (AI), big data, the Internet-of-Things (IoT), as well as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

The fund mainly focuses on two regions, Switzerland and Western Europe, though it would consider other geographics if opportunities arise.

SIX Fintech Ventures distinguishes itself from other VCs in that the fund provides the value-added of an international firm in addition to financial support. Portfolio companies receive active support and also get to leverage the group’s extensive network comprising SIX’s various business units and 122 shareholders, as well as direct linkage to the Swiss financial center and access to experts from the F10 Fintech Incubator and Accelerator, a project initially started in 2014 by SIX and which the firm has remained actively involved in since then.

Investment into 30 early-stage fintech startups planed

SIX Fintech Ventures’ current portfolio companies include six Fintech Startups, that means we will hear from SIX Venture more news soon as they aim to invest into up to 30 Fintechs.

Vestr

Vestr operates in the structured investment market, providing independent white-labeled business-to-business (B2B) software that facilitates the creation and lifecycle management of actively managed certificates (AMCs). Vestr graduated from the F10 Fintech Accelerator in 2017, and signed up Julius Baer as client in 2019, helping the bank develop a platform for the management of AMCs.

Expense Robot

Expense Robot uses AI to automate all expenses and company credit card processes, prevent fraud, increase employee satisfaction and allow for valuable data insights. Founded in 2019, Expense Robot went live with a first wave of customers in September of the same year. Since then, the startup has landed renowned global customers including Swissquote, Kägi, Ameropa and SkyCell.

Tradeplus24

Zurich-based Tradeplus24 is a finech specialist lender providing flexible, easy funding to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) looking to improve their liquidity position by leveraging their domestic and international receivables. Founded in 2016, Tradeplus24 boasts Credit Suisse as a major investor, along with names such as SIX Fintech Ventures, Berliner Volksbank Ventures (BVBV), and Credit Suisse Entrepreneur Capital. The startup expanded to Australia in 2019.

PXL Vision

PXL Vision, a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), develop software solutions for digital identity authentication and customer onboarding powered by latest computer vision, AI and VR/AR algorithms. PXL Vision is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, with R&D centers in Novi Sad, Serbia, and Yerevan, Armenia.

Archilyse

Founded in 2017, Archilyse is a proptech startup that offers holistic numeric architecture analysis as an easy to use software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. Archilyse measures data-based architectural characteristics of real estate properties and provides these to project developers, architects, and asset owners, allowing them to optimize a variety of processes in the real estate value chain.

Value3

Value3 is a B2B fintech company offering a capital market AI-platform for independent, predictive and fully automated credit ratings, research, ESG and analytics. The platform is used by buy-side investment and risk managers in capital markets, and combines financial data with unstructured online digital footprints, news, events, trends and patterns of the companies from diverse sources to transform data overload into actionable insights.