Authena wins Tech4Trust 2023 First Prize

Cybercrime is growing exponentially. Artificial intelligence can be used for the good, the bad and the ugly. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the cost of cybercrime is expected to reach $8,000 billion by 2023 and $10,500 billion by 2025. Last weekend, the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol) and the Federal Office of Customs and Border Protection (FOCP) fell victim to a cyber-attack exploiting a flaw in the servers of the Swiss company hosting some of their data. In the face of these growing challenges, the Tech4Trust Accelerator Program honored its four Season 4 winners.

Winning Authenticity and Traceability Solution

Authena was crowned on Tuesday in front of a large audience in Palexpo, Geneva. The Swiss startup won the CHF 70’000 first prize by Canton of Vaud. Speaking of this recognition, Matteo Panzavolta, Founder and CEO Authena says: “Our win shows our serious commitment to using tech to build trust. A big thanks to Trust Valley and Tech4Trust for their help and guidance along the way.” The Swiss cybersecurity startup will be showcasing next week in Paris at Vivatech 2023.

Earlier this year, Authena, a global leader in IoT & blockchain technology solutions for secure product authentication, supply chain tracking, and interactive manufacturer-consumer communication, was the first ever Swiss company to win a Glomo Award at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This prize, which is often won by tech giants such as Samsung, Huawei or Apple, was awarded to Authena for Best Mobile Innovation for Web3.

The second prize goes to ClearSky. Based at the Trust Village, the startup develops private, personalized and proactive solutions leveraging Edge Artificial Intelligence technology. In third position comes French startup SnowPack offering an invisibility overlay network mixing anonymity and security creating an independence layer to Internet. The last startup recognized with the Social Impact Award was Resilio. The EPFL startup supports organizations in their transition to digital sobriety by offering a SaaS platform that allows companies to assess the environmental footprint of their IT products and services.

Resilience through trust

Contacted by Startupticker.ch, Trust Valley's CEO Lennig Pedron notes that alumni from the Tech4Trust program remain in demand by investors: "Despite the overall slowdown in investment in startups, the observation this season is that digital Trust and cybersecurity continue to attract solid funding. In fact, with the support of Tech4Trust, several of our startups raised funds in the first half of the year, bringing the total raised since the first edition of the program to +300 million." 

(ES)

Picture by Trust Valley. From Left to right: Flaminia Giuncato (Trust Valley), Juliette Ivanez (SPEI - Canton de Vaud), Matteo Panzavolta (Authena) and Lennig Pedron (Trust Valley)