On 10 July 2025 ETH Zurich brought into force an equity and licensing policy under which it takes, as a rule, a 2% stake in every spin-off incorporated as a stock corporation, and publishes three standard licence options that trade up to two further percentage points of equity for lower royalties and sublicensing charges. At ETH Zurich and at the Technical University of Denmark, two European technical universities, a spin-out does not normally receive a single, unencumbered technology asset at incorporation. Research becomes a business through several economically distinct instruments: university equity, patent licences, reimbursement of patent expenses, royalties, sublicensing charges, software transfers, options and eventual purchases of intellectual property. These instruments do not affect financing in the same way. Equity changes ownership and future dilution; licence consideration consumes cash when revenues or financing arrive; and the scope, exclusivity and transferability of the technology rights determine what the company can actually commercialise or convey to an industrial acquirer. The relevant question for anyone financing, buying from or buying a defence-relevant spin-out is therefore not simply how much equity a university receives, but how cash obligations and control over the underlying technology are distributed through the life of the company, and whether a buyer that acquires the company also acquires the technology.