Best Chemicals and Materials Companies in Switzerland
The 179 best Chemicals and Materials companies in Switzerland in 2026, ranked by funding and momentum. Funding, investors, founders, valuation, tech stack and live signals. Top: Glencore.
Ranked by disclosed equity funding and recent momentum, this directory covers 179 Chemicals and Materials companies operating out of Switzerland, together accounting for $2.3B in total disclosed funding. That number, though, needs context. One company carries almost all of it.
Glencore's $2.2B in disclosed funding dwarfs every other name in this list, and you can feel that gravitational pull across the data. Strip it out and the remaining 178 companies share roughly $100M between them, with Aptgag at $24M, Solevo at $10M, and Lightium at $7M representing the next tier. No unicorns here, which tells you something about where Switzerland's chemicals and materials sector sits in its funding cycle. And yet the operational signal is harder to dismiss: median install growth across chemicals and building materials apps is running at roughly 18% year-over-year across 32 tracked apps, which suggests actual market engagement is moving faster than funding headlines imply. I'd watch that gap. The hot themes right now, urban sustainability, green infrastructure, sustainable city planning, aren't decorative. They're reshaping procurement decisions and product roadmaps across the sector, and the companies best positioned to convert those tailwinds into contracted revenue are the ones worth tracking here.
Our analysis of 234 Chemicals and Materials companies
$21.9b in tracked funding; 57% of the stack-profiled cohort runs cloud-native; funding activity peaked in 2025.
Ranked: Best Chemicals and Materials companies in Switzerland
| # | Company | Last round | Disclosed funding | Employees | Founded | Founder | Tech stack | Market signals (1y) | Patents & IP focus | Recent signals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | abifor Abifor develops and produces thermoplastic hot melt adhesives. | — | — | 4 | 1957 | — | TYPO3 CMSPHPDebian+12 | — | — | — |
| 2 | Accu Holding Provider of diversified business services intended to focus on acquisition of industrial companies in the… | — | — | 804 | 1896 | — | — | — | — | — |
| 3 | ACTEGA Schmid Rhyner Manufacturer of coatings, adhesives, and specialty chemicals | — | — | 80 | 1880 | — | — | — | 27 patents Inkjet-based polymer particle coating and varnishing technologies for substrate surface enhancement | — |
| 4 | advanced chemicals for optical monomers Advanced Chemicals for Optical Monomers is a manufacturer of monomers for ophthalmic lenses and sunglasses. | — | — | 40 | 2007 | — | — | — | — | — |
| 5 | Aebisol Provider of insulation services | — | — | 20 | 1997 | — | — | — | — | — |
| 6 | Aglobis Manufacturer and distributor of sulphur and sulphuric acids | — | — | — | 2017 | Jan Joop Alberts Cbm CEO | JoomlaPHPHelix Ultimate+8 | — | — | — |
| 7 | Agrexis Provider of scientific and regulatory consulting services for the agrochemical industry | — | — | — | 2011 | Philip Kessler Managing Director | — | — | — | — |
| 8 | Aluminium Rheinfelden Alloys Manufacturer of aluminum casting alloys | — | — | 201 | 1898 | — | WordPressMySQLPHP+9 | — | — | — |
Top 12 Chemicals and Materials companies in Switzerland
#1
Public · Baar, Canton of Zug · founded 1974 · 145977 employees$2.2Braised▾
Producer and supplier of metals and minerals. Services include production, sourcing, processing, refining, transportation, storage, financing, and supplying commodities. Assets include cobalt, copper, metals, minerals, crude oil, coal, natural gas, and agricultural products.
#2
Seed · Zurich, Zurich · founded 2023$7Mraised▾
Specializing in photonic integrated circuits that offers production-grade TFLN PIC foundry services
#3
Acquired · Geneva, Geneva · founded 2017 · 475 employees$10Mraised▾
Distributor of chemicals and inputs for agricultural segments
- Dec 2023Series A$10M
#4
Late Stage · Baar, Canton of Zug · founded 2016 · 243 employees$24.2Mraised▾
APTG AG is a provider of mechanical and pressure-controlled primary packaging technologies and dispensing systems for manufacturers and suppliers of cosmetic, personal care, pharmaceutical, and food products. Geographically, the firm has operational footprints in the Middle East and Africa, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Rest of the world.
- Jun 2017Conventional Debt$11.1M
- Jun 2017Post IPO$13M
#5
Seed · Villigen, Aargau · founded 2019 · 12 employees$4.6Mraised▾
Developer of electron diffractometers and provider of crystallographic services. The company offers electron diffraction instruments for solid compound analysis. It enables researchers to characterize nano-crystalline systems unmeasurable by conventional X-ray methods. The company also provides crystallographic services integrating electron diffraction with crystal growth techniques.
- Aug 2021Seed$2.8M
- May 2020Seed$1.9M
- Mar 2020Grant (prize money)$55.3K
- Dec 2019Grant (prize money)$55.1K
#6
Acquired · Basel, Basel Stadt · founded 1794 · 800 employees$3.7Mraised▾
Manufacturer of medical textiles and wound care products
#7
Funding Raised · Basel, Basel Stadt · founded 2021 · 3800 employees$284.5Kraised▾
Manufacturer of specialty chemicals
- Mar 2023Grant (prize money)$284.5K
#8
Seed · Lausanne, Vaud · founded 2016 · 44 employees$130Kraised▾
LiGenTec, a spin-off of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, develops silicon nitride wafers exclusively for photonic integrated circuits. It provides a 2500nm thick wafer with features such as low propagation loss, low surface roughness, and low-loss waveguides and fibre-chip coupling. Applications include coherent telecommunication, filters, supercontinuum generation, spectroscopy, sensing, quantum and microwave photonics.
- Feb 2023Grant (prize money)$52.9K
- Mar 2021Grant (prize money)$1.7M
- Jan 2021Grant (prize money)$173.4K
- Sep 2020Grant (prize money)$3M
#9
Funding Raised · Aubonne, Vaud · founded 2013$1.1Mraised▾
Manufacturer of on-site disinfection solution generators using electrified water and salt. The company provides machines for creating disinfectant and detergent solutions. These machines use a process involving electrified water and salt. The company also offers an application for finding refill stations and accessing exclusive content.
#10
Public · Winterthur, Zurich · founded 2012$499.8Kraised▾
Provider of process technology for mixing, foaming, and cooling plastics. This company offers equipment and components for various applications within the plastics industry. Their solutions address mixing for homogeneous plastic melts, improving product quality. They also provide technology for foaming, enabling reduced plastic consumption and lower production costs. Furthermore, they offer cooling systems for plastics processing, polymer production, and fibers, ensuring high cooling capacity without product degradation. The company's offerings include mixers, foam extrusion systems, gas dosing stations, melt coolers, and heat exchangers.
- Nov 2021Grant (prize money)$499.8K
#11
Seed · Untersiggenthal, Aargau · founded 2020 · 7 employees$41.3Kraised▾
Manufacturer of fresnel zone plates, condensers, test targets, and beam splitters
#12
Funding Raised · Dubendorf, Zurich · founded 1880 · 1319 employees—raised▾
Provider of nanoscale materials research services. The institute aims to translate cutting-edge research into practical applications, bridging the gap between scientific discovery and real-world implementation. It offers training and professional development programs to foster knowledge exchange and skill development among researchers, students, and industry professionals.
Funding & investor landscape
Notable founders
Market landscape — 10 sub-themes by coverage
Share of Chemicals and Materials coverage by sub-theme.
Regulatory-risk over time rising
Funding & growth over time
funding rising · growth rising
How research on Advanced Materials is moving in Switzerland
A read on the academic research around Advanced Materials — which themes are gaining ground, the institutions and researchers driving them, and how the tone is shifting. Based on 85 Switzerland-affiliated papers.
- ETH Zurich38
- Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology19
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne18
- Institute for Biomedical Engineering6
- Paul Scherrer Institute3
- Actuator2→9
- Elastomer1→8
- Smart material4→8
- Composite material1→5
- Soft robotics1→4
- Smart material9
- Actuator9
- Shape-memory alloy8
- SMA*5
- Nanotechnology4
- Fabrication1
- Biomimetics1
- Nanotechnology1
- Adhesive1
- Ceramic1
Where advanced materials is researched across Switzerland
Location clusters by institution affiliation — each city's volume, stance tone, and a quick read on its hot topic, what's advancing, the opening opportunity, and the main concern.
Common questions
Riya reads income statements for fun. She covers the real money in a sector — revenue, growth, who actually earns — and never met a vague claim she didn't want a number for.