Wärtsilä has been recognized the leading company for start-up collaboration in the Venture Acceleration Alliance (VAA) Global Startup Collaboration Benchmark 2026, marking its second first-place ranking.
The recognition reflects Wärtsilä’s long-term commitment to working with start-ups, innovation partners, and business teams to accelerate new solutions.
“I am very proud of the team and to have been part of this journey since 2015. Since then, many projects and initiatives have strengthened our start-up collaboration—from start-up challenges to the opening of Wärtsilä’s Sustainable Technology Hub in 2022. A key part of this work is the WISE ecosystem, launched in 2024, which enables companies to participate in R&D projects,” says Eleonor Hedström, Director, Next Business Lab and WISE Ecosystem Lead.
For almost a decade, start-up collaboration has helped Wärtsilä launch pilots, form partnerships, and develop solutions with start-ups, researchers, customers, and industry experts. What began with start-up challenges and ecosystem engagement has grown into a broad collaboration model that brings these groups together around shared opportunities and challenges.
Mare Straetmans, Founder of Platform Zero (lead partner of the Venture Acceleration Alliance), states: “Wärtsilä stands out as a true leader in corporate-startup collaboration. What sets them apart is their long-term commitment, clear strategic focus, and broad engagement with startups, from innovation programs to real world pilots. But what impressed us most is how this translates into action. Just recently, we introduced a startup working on methane abatement to Wärtsilä. Within weeks, the startup was connected to the right technical experts and business teams. That is what successful corporate-startup collaboration should look like: not just strategies and programs, but real action and real opportunities. We hope Wärtsilä will inspire many more corporates across the energy and maritime industry to follow their example.”
The benchmark evaluated 30 companies and 30 ports on execution and scaling, ecosystem engagement, accessibility, and venture investment. Wärtsilä ranked first among corporate participants, scoring 4.60 out of 5 and earning top marks in several categories.
Analysing our performance going forward
Going forward, Wärtsilä will use the benchmark results as a valuable opportunity to strengthen its collaboration with start-ups and growth companies even further. While the ranking recognises strong progress, it also points to areas where visibility, accessibility, and awareness of collaboration opportunities can be improved—particularly around single-company projects connected to programmes such as WISE.
“Looking ahead, one key learning is that single-company project opportunities under the Veturi programmes like WISE are not yet widely known within the Finnish start-up ecosystem. We at Wärtsilä aim to raise awareness of this opportunity and we are also analyzing where we perform well and where we can improve in collaboration with growth companies. The areas that the benchmark results highlight as areas for further development will be evaluated as part of our continuous improvement work.”, Eleonor Hedström says.