NativeAI takes second place in the zünder accelerator final

NativeAI finished second in the final of the zünder accelerator 2026. On Friday 25 September six finalists pitched at the Verkehrshaus der Schweiz in Lucerne in front of a five-person jury. We came home with second place and CHF 7’500 in prize money.

The final

Six teams, five jurors, one pitch each. We presented NativeAI Guard: the Swiss trust layer that lets employees and AI agents use AI without company data leaving Switzerland. It was the pitch we had trained in every session of the season.

What zünder is

zünder is the startup programme of Central Switzerland, and it runs as a season rather than as an event. You meet every month, each time at a different location in the region, which is also how you get to know the Central Swiss startup ecosystem from the inside. The programme takes no equity.

Every session combines coaching with practitioner input. You choose the topics you want to work on and are matched with coaches for them, so the people across the table change as your questions change: founders who have built companies, experts in their field, lawyers.

What the programme changed for us

The first is the thinking. Picking our own topics let us push a different dimension of the business each month and have that one taken apart by someone who had done it before. Feedback from people with no reason to be polite is the fastest way to find out which parts of a plan only hold up while you are the one explaining them.

The second is the pitch. You train it in every session, and over a season that does something a single deck review cannot: we learned how to say what NativeAI Guard does, and why it matters, in words that land with people who do not work in AI security.

The third is the network. One introduction from a zünder coach put us in front of the group CISO of a bank, who gave us the most detailed product feedback we received all year, including his reasons for not buying yet. Early market feedback is the most important thing a founder can get, and it does not come to you. You have to push hard for it. That is the best advice we can pass on.

Thank you

Thank you to the zünder team, to the jury, to the coaches and to the other startups in the programme, who were generous with contacts and blunt with feedback. Congratulations to the other five finalists. If you are building a company in Central Switzerland, apply to the next round.

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