Cologne-based agri-robotics startup eternal.ag, emerging from stealth today, has raised €8 million in funding from Simon Capital, Oyster Bay Venture Capital, EquityPitcher Ventures, and Backbone Ventures, as Vestbee was informed.
- Founded in 2025 by Renji John and Sherry Kunjachan, eternal.ag develops autonomous robots for greenhouse agriculture that operate without human input. Its first product, Harvester, is designed for tomato crops and can run for up to 22 hours per day.
- The system uses AI to identify and harvest produce, while collecting operational data that is fed back into the software to improve performance over time.
- The robots are built to work within existing greenhouse infrastructure and are intended to replace manual, repetitive labor, which has declined in Europe by up to 30% since 2010.
“We develop and validate our robots using simulation-first development. That allows us to train, test, and fail safely in virtual greenhouses, cutting iteration cycles from months to days. Once deployed, every robot action feeds data back into the system, which is designed to learn, improve and scale," explains Renji John, CEO and co-founder of eternal.ag..
Details of the deal
- The firm plans to accelerate the development of its autonomous greenhouse robots, expand commercial deployments across Europe, and enhance its technology to support a wider range of crop types, helping it scale its vision of fully automated greenhouse operations.
“Greenhouse horticulture is one of the most efficient and sustainable ways to grow fresh produce year-round. Yet, labor shortages put the industry at risk, and robotics is the only future-proof solution to build a decentralized, resilient food supply chain for the next generation. eternal.ag’s experienced team has a deep understanding of what growers are up against and has developed a solution to tackle this in a sustainable and measured way," claims Niklas Leske, Principal at Simon Capital.
