Givaudan Invests in Microcaps

Givaudan, headquartered in Vernier in Canton of Geneva, has announced an equity investment and strategic collaboration with Microcaps AG, a Swiss startup born out of ETH Zurich’s Complex Materials Group. The partnership targets one of the most technically demanding frontiers in fragrance: microencapsulation.

The technology matters more than it might sound. Encapsulation is what makes a scent last on skin hours after application, what enables alcohol-free formulations that open entirely new markets, and what allows fragrance performance to be tuned with scientific precision. Microcaps has built a patented microfluidic platform — the kind of precision that was previously confined to laboratory research — and is now scaling it to industrial reality with its PerfumePearls solution.

For Givaudan, which posted CHF 7.5 billion in sales in 2025 and employs over 17,500 people across the world, the move signals where fragrance innovation is heading: away from empirical blending and toward controlled, reproducible molecular delivery. “Encapsulation is one of the most transformative technologies in our field,” said Jeremy Compton, Global Head of Science & Technology Fragrances.

What makes this story particularly Swiss is its geography. Givaudan’s roots in Geneva stretch back over 250 years — the city has long been where perfumery meets precision. Microcaps brings the same spirit from Zurich’s deep research ecosystem. Together, they form a corridor of Swiss fragrance science that runs from the banks of Lake Geneva to the ETH campus.

For Alessandro Ofner and Michael Hagander, the two co-founders of Microcaps, this is the moment their platform reaches global scale: “This collaboration allows us to scale our technology and bring scientific precision to a wider market.”

A Geneva company, and also a giant in its field. A deep-tech ETHZ spin-out. The future of fragrance smells like a Swiss Health Valley success story.