Cologne’s Eternal.ag Raises €8M To Launch AI-Powered Greenhouse Harvesting Robots

The round was backed by Simon Capital, Oyster Bay Venture Capital, EquityPitcher Ventures, and Backbone Ventures.

Founded in 2025 by Renji John and Sherry Kunjachan, Eternal.ag develops fully autonomous robots to perform greenhouse crop work without human operators.

With greenhouse labour in Europe declining by up to 30% since 2010, growers face mounting staffing shortages. Eternal.ag’s robots aim to ensure greenhouses operate reliably and continuously, automating repetitive, physically demanding harvesting tasks even when labour is limited. The company envisions fully robotic greenhouse operations by 2040, requiring no manual labour.

Read Also - Manchester City Announces New Partnership With Cybersecurity Firm N-able

Eternal.ag’s first commercial product, Harvester, is a fully autonomous robot for tomato greenhouses. Operating up to 22 hours a day, Harvester integrates with an AI-powered system to maintain produce quality and optimise harvesting. Built as a modular platform, it is designed to expand with additional robotic functions to support broader greenhouse operations over time.

The company will use the funding to accelerate product development, expand commercial deployments across Europe, and adapt its technology for additional crop types.

Eternal.ag currently employs 26 people across Europe and India, with its headquarters in Cologne and offices in Bengaluru.

“Autonomous robots only work if they can handle real-world variability between plants, layouts, and daily operations. 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,” said Renji John, CEO and co-founder of Eternal.ag.

Niklas Leske, Principal at Simon Capital, said, “Climate change, labour shortages, and rising demand are pushing food production to its limits. Greenhouse horticulture is one of the most efficient and sustainable ways to grow fresh produce year-round. Yet, labour shortages put the industry at risk, and robotics is the only future-proof solution to build a decentralised, 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.”