Wavestone’s Swiss Cybersecurity Startup Radar 2026 is a snapshot of how the Swiss cyber ecosystem is actually growing: creation remains stable, scaling is still gradual, and the map is still led by Zurich, Vaud and a handful of incubation platforms.
Panop is included in this year’s Swiss Gems — companies already on the radar that have moved in a material way since the previous edition.
What the radar shows
Wavestone tracked 49 startups and scale-ups (down two on the prior year), with 23 new entries. Average company age is 3.4 years; average headcount is 15.7. The ecosystem is still a multi-hub one:
- Zurich remains the densest hub, with 17+ accelerators and incubators and 8 of 23 new startups in 2026
- Vaud is organised around EPFL Innovation Park and Trust Valley, which has supported 200+ startups
- Geneva (Fongit) and smaller hubs such as Ticino are picking up activity
Most Swiss cyber startups still sell first in Switzerland and Europe. 45% have clients outside Switzerland; only 10.2% have clients outside Europe. International expansion remains the hard part.
The five largest categories this year are Secure Data Exchange (14%), Data Security (12%), Network Security (12%), AI Security (8%) and Awareness & Training (8%).
Why Panop is on the map
In the “News from Swiss Gems” section, Wavestone records Panop’s shift from attack surface management to a Continuous Threat Exposure Management platform, with backing from Trust Valley through Tech4Trust.
That is the same move our customers asked for: not another inventory of what exists on the internet, but a way to see which exposures are reachable, which matter to the business, and what to fix first. Product context is on our product and risk prioritisation pages.
The Swiss angle Wavestone highlights
Two themes in the 2026 radar line up with how we build:
- Sovereign, trust-centric solutions. Startups differentiate on data location, supply-chain control, open source, or Swiss/European funding. Panop is Swiss-hosted and built for organisations that have to show evidence, not just policy.
- AI as a tool, not the category. Most of the radar is “AI for cyber” (automation, detection, content). Very few companies yet focus on securing AI systems themselves. That gap is why we treat AI-SPM as a first-class use case, not a feature footnote.
Read the radar
The full report is published by Wavestone (July 2026). Use the Download PDF button above, or open it on Wavestone’s site.