By Marleen Kaesebier
BASEL, Switzerland, May 5 (Reuters) – Switzerland’s biotech industry shifted toward private financing in 2025 as funding from capital markets remained difficult to obtain and pharmaceutical companies sought out collaborative deals with biotech firms, a report on the sector showed on Tuesday.
While total funding for the sector increased 2.1% to 2.6 billion Swiss francs ($3.32 billion), the amount for privately funded companies rose 38% from 2024, accounting for nearly half of all funding last year, the Swiss Biotech Report 2026 found.
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly opting for R&D collaborations, licensing agreements or other arrangements that include funding for their biotech partners, the report said.
This trend is expected to continue, while more traditional acquisition activity has been slow, Michael Altorfer, chief executive of the Swiss Biotech Association, said in a presentation.
“It’s a global trend that pharma companies are trying to de-risk these structures,” Frederik Schmachtenberg, EY partner and global life sciences lead for Financial Accounting Advisory Services and co-author of the report, said in an interview.
Schmachtenberg said the overall capital markets environment remained challenging after the “sugar high” years of the COVID-19 era.
Altorfer said in a statement that most investment was still coming from abroad.
Total revenue for the Swiss biotech sector rose to a record 7.5 billion francs in 2025, driven by more companies moving into the commercial stage and by demand for specialised contract manufacturing and development services, the report said.
Product approvals declined slightly in the United States, Europe and Switzerland, but this was partly offset by a rise in other key markets, including China and Canada, it added.
($1 = 0.7831 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by Marleen Kaesebier in Basel; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
