When Hardware Meets Everyday Office Life: The Invisible Hurdle Facing Robotics Startups

A robotics startup differs from most other tech companies in one crucial way: the product moves, makes noise, needs space, and sometimes breaks. Yet most Swiss robotics teams work in office spaces designed for laptops and meetings, not robotic arms and sensors. That's notable, because Switzerland has generated roughly 3.5 times more venture-funded robotics startups per capita since 2020 than the United States, and five times more than the United Kingdom. The technology is there. The right workspace often isn't.

Switzerland channels 63% of all venture capital into deep tech, the highest share of any country in the world, and hosts more than 230 VC-backed robotics startups, anchored by the ETH Zurich–EPFL corridor. Yet commercial office space in Zurich is rarely designed for hardware-based work, with tangible consequences for young teams. Ask any hardware founder about their everyday office life, and the same problems come up: no space to test a robot without knocking into desks, landlords uneasy about noise or dust, zero infrastructure for prototyping, no natural network of technical peers. This isn't a knock on traditional coworking — its model was built for knowledge workers, not mechanical engineering.