According to a notification published today in the Swiss commercial register, HYT was declared bankrupt by the Tribunal régional du Littoral et du Val-de-Travers. HYT caused a stir with its mechanical timepieces that use liquid to indicate the time. The company had attracted investors such as Peter Brabeck-Letmathe and had raised CHF23 million.
HYT founded in 2012 was active in the upper luxury market creating exclusive hybrid mechanical timepieces for watch connoisseurs. In the first hydro-mechanical watches in the world, the hours were displayed with a fluorescent liquid. The combination of mechanical watchmaking with the science of microfluidics was a technological first.
In 2016 the start-up closed a financing round of CHF23 million. Investors included Peter Brabeck-Letmathe and a Swiss-based private asset management company as a strategic anchor investor. Back then HYT’s watches were available in 69 points of sale worldwide.
The company was now declared bankrupt. According to a letter to suppliers which was published on LinkedIn, HYT worked since the end of 2020 on reorganizing its financing to survive the pandemic. However institutional shareholders did not participate in a planned capital increase and HYT was not able to raise the capital it was looking for.
(Stefan Kyora)
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