The 2025 START Summitter Award went to cleantech startup Emissium, which provides electricity emissions data, enabling companies to track, monitor, and reduce their electrical footprint. In addition to a CHF 10’000 cash prize, the startup secured an investment of €0.5 million from b2ventures to scale its impact.
Approximately 7000 visitors, including 1,000+ startups, 1000+ startups and 150+ speakers, attended the START Summit 2025, a two-day student-organized conference focused on boosting innovation and entrepreneurship in Switzerland and across Europe. Alongside various insightful keynote speeches and panel discussions, the highlight of the event was the START Summiteer Award ceremony for early-stage startups. The competition offers selected startups the opportunity to present their business ideas in front of the audience, including industry leaders, serial founders, and renowned European VCs.
From over 2,000 startups from around the globe, only 4 finalists made it to the final stage, including Emissium which won the a ticket to the competition from START Lisbon, a chapter of START Global. The startup stood out once again with their pitch and solution, winning a cash prize of CHF 10’000 and an equity investment of Euro 500’000 from b2venture, an early-stage European venture capital firm. Discussions around the investment terms are currently in progress.
Established in 2023 in Sion, Rafael Castro-Amoedo (CEO) and Alessio Santecchia (CTO), co-founders of Emissium, focus on decarbonizing energy consumption. The platform delivers real-time electricity data to businesses, particularly data centers, enabling them to take actions based on data to reduce carbon emissions and optimize costs. With a team of eight employees, the startup offers companies an easy-to-use API for accessing real-time and historical electricity data insights across over 2,000 European locations at the regional level, with updates every 15 minutes. Last month, the startup went live and it already serves 10 customers. Moving forward, Emissium plans to further expand its operations in the DACH region and Iberia.
(RAN)
Image: START Summit
The new Swiss Venture Capital Report was published on 26 January. It analyses 304 financing rounds closed in 2020 and includes further article such as an interview with Michael Hengartner, President of the ETH Board, and a list of Swiss "soonicorns". 
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