E99 [AI-Translated] SpaceX | De Vigier Award | Dealroom Schweiz | Merantix | Market Snapshot Mai | Exit-Komm | Mosaic

In this episode of Burn Rate – The VC Insider Podcast, Max Meister and Guy Giuffredi review the Swiss and European venture market in May 2026, discuss the SpaceX IPO and address why so many exits are communicated far too positively. In the news segment, they cover the W.A. de Vigier Award 2026 with five winning startups across healthcare, dental robotics, nano-semiconductors and energy. They then analyze a new Dealroom study on the Swiss startup landscape: internationally relevant and highly productive, but with a clear scaling problem. Finally, they discuss Merantix Capital's new EUR 103M fund and its "customers before code" approach. In the focus topic, they analyze the Burn Rate Market Snapshot for May 2026. Around CHF 190M was invested across 13 rounds, with a clear focus on life sciences. The largest deal was Windward Bio at USD 165M. On the exit side, LimmaTech Biologics dominated with up to USD 780M to Eli Lilly. In Europe, over EUR 9.6B was deployed across 245+ deals, led by AI infrastructure and data centers. The listener question addresses a sensitive topic: Why are exits on LinkedIn and in press releases often presented as huge successes when they're actually fire sales? Topics include transparency, signaling effects and when humility would be better than LinkedIn theater. The deep dive covers Mosaic SoC's USD 3.8M pre-seed round. The Zurich-based ETH spin-off develops energy-efficient perception chips for smart glasses and wearables. With insights from Antonia Albert, Principal at Founderful. An episode about life sciences scaling, exit honesty, the AI infrastructure boom and whether Switzerland has an innovation problem or a scaling problem.