MassChallenge Switzerland, part of MassChallenge’s global network for innovators and zero-equity startup accelerators, celebrated yesterday the winners of its 2023 Early-Stage Startup Accelerator Program, as well as the Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) Climate Resilience Prize laureate. 

Hosted in Lausanne, the 2023 MassChallenge Switzerland Awards Ceremony was attended by over 400 guests and simultaneously broadcast worldwide. The ceremony celebrated the 12 early-stage startups that won the MassChallenge Switzerland awards, sharing the CHF 400,000 equity-free cash prize among them, in recognition of their solutions contributing to substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or the removal of carbon or/and in consideration of their broader social and environmental impact. Impossible Materials has been distinguished as the Diamond Winner with CHF 120,000 in cash.

In addition, the LDC Climate Resilience Prize, a non-dilutive cash award of CHF 100,000, was awarded to SeaStock. 

“I was honored to present the Climate Resilience Prize on behalf of LDC to SeaStock, whose impressive solution to produce and extract compounds derived from seaweed and algae shows great potential to drive climate resilience across several value chains and industries,” said Michael Gelchie, LDC’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our collaboration with MassChallenge is directly aligned with LDC’s purpose to create fair and sustainable value for the benefit of current and future generations, by supporting ideas, solutions and technologies with the potential to help shape more sustainable food and agriculture production systems.” 

The partners also awarded over CHF 100,000 in in-kind prizes to the 2023 startups. Reuteler & Cie and kellerhals carrard will provide 12 hours of IP and legal services, respectively, to 12 selected startups: ArcoScreen, Allcup, Biosimo, biped.ai, Correntics, Hexem, Impossible Materials, irmos technologies, Neology Hydrogen, Perovskia Solar, REVOZONA, and Terra Preta.

Mass Challenge Switzerland also supported Impossible Materials with CHF 10,000 for their participation in the One Young World 2024 Summit.

Matt Lashmar, Managing Director of MassChallenge Switzerland, said: “I would like to thank our experts and partners for generously giving their time and expertise to help our startups advance their projects. This help is reflected in the record result this year, with 58% of startups exceeding their ingoing accelerator objective. I would also like to recognize the support we gained across the ecosystem to enable our entrepreneurs to be “climate responsible. We hope this becomes the ‘new normal’ for accelerators, in collective pursuit of reduced emissions and benefits for society as a whole.” 

Ian Roberts, President of MassChallenge Switzerland added: “I’d like to congratulate all the startups who competed for the LDC Climate Resilience Prize Award and will, as they grow their businesses, decarbonize the food value chain. In particular, I would like to congratulate the 6 finalists. You gave the jury a tough decision to make. SeaStock was selected as a worthy winner because they had the potential to deliver a rapid impact by helping cut methane emissions from world’s dairy and beef herds. The dairy and meat industry is a significant contributor to climate change, and we need to go faster to rebalance protein intake across animal and plant sources to reduce stress on land and water resources. However, changing consumer habits is challenging and dairy & meat consumption is forecast to continue to rise globally. SeaStock provides a solution that can plug into the existing supply chain, thus scale fast to cut emissions in the short and medium term. They create a meaningful impact as we speed up global transition to a future where alternative proteins take a much bigger share of our diet.” 

 

More details here.