We are thrilled to announce that BTRY has won the HERMES Startup AWARD 2026 at Hannover Messe. This recognition reflects the hard work of our entire team and the strength of the technology we have been building since day one. Receiving it on one of the world’s biggest industrial stages means a great deal to us. Thank you to everyone at BTRY for making this possible.
The HERMES Award is one of the most prestigious innovation prizes in the industrial world. For more than 20 years, Deutsche Messe has awarded it annually to a product or solution that demonstrates a particularly high level of technological innovation, with market readiness as a key criterion. Alongside the main prize, the HERMES Startup AWARD is given each year to a company younger than five years. Both awards are presented during the opening ceremony of Hannover Messe, one of the world’s leading trade fairs for industrial technology, bringing together thousands of companies from the mechanical engineering, electrical, digital, and energy industries. This year, the ceremony took place on April 19 in the presence of Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Dorothee Bär, Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space, presented the award. The jury was chaired by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Hanselka, President of the Fraunhofer Society.
“BTRY’s ultra-thin battery shows that innovative ideas generate competitiveness. This space-saving and resource-efficient energy storage solution unlocks new possibilities and underlines our message for future policy: Investing in knowledge means securing prosperity,” said Dorothee Bär, Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space.
Congratulations to Schaeffler for winning the main HERMES Award 2026 for their platform for highly integrated actuators for humanoid robots. And congratulations as well to the other two nominees, Festo and Ziehl-Abegg, for making it to the final.
As Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Hanselka, Jury Chair and President of the Fraunhofer Society, put it: “[…] we need efficient, lightweight, and flexibly accessible energy storage technologies – in other words, batteries that are future-oriented and enable new, innovative applications. In the light of global competition, speed of implementation is just as crucial as quality – it is the order of the day. The start-up BTRY has demonstrated the superiority of both its product performance and its production technology […].”
About BTRY
BTRY is a Swiss startup and spin-off of ETH Zürich and Empa, founded in 2023 and headquartered in Dübendorf. We develop ultra-thin, fully flexible solid-state batteries using production technologies from the semiconductor industry. The batteries operate at temperatures up to 150 °C, start at 0.1 mm in thickness, and can be fully charged and discharged within one minute. Target applications include wireless IoT sensors, medical wearables, consumer electronics, and smart labels.
