Greenhouses have become central to securing year‑round supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables, offering far greater resilience to climate volatility, land constraints and pest pressure than open‑field production. But the sector faces a mounting structural threat: labour availability.
Across Europe, greenhouse labour supply has dropped by as much as 30% since 2010, and forecasts indicate the decline will continue. For growers dependent on seasonal workers for intensive, repetitive harvesting work, the staffing gap is becoming unmanageable.
German agritech start-up eternal.ag believes autonomous robotics is the only scalable answer.
A robot built for real‑world greenhouses
The company has unveiled Harvester, a fully autonomous robot designed to operate up to 22 hours per day and perform precision harvesting tasks with a high degree of repeatability. Harvester forms part of a broader AI‑powered platform that monitors crop conditions, ensures cut quality and continuously optimises performance.
Crucially, the system is modular, enabling new robotic functions, from pruning to crop care, to be added over time to expand automation across the entire greenhouse.
“Autonomous robots only work if they can handle real‑world variability between plants, layouts and daily operations,” said Renji John, CEO and co‑founder of eternal.ag. “We develop and validate our robots using simulation‑first development. That lets us 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.”
By 2040, eternal.ag envisions greenhouses that are fully automated, requiring no manual operations at all.
€8M funding round to accelerate European expansion
Eternal.ag has raised €8 million in venture capital to advance development of Harvester, build additional robotic modules, and scale commercial deployments across Europe. The company also plans to extend its platform to additional crop types beyond its initial focus.
The round includes investment from Simon Capital, Oyster Bay Venture Capital, EquityPitcher Ventures and Backbone Ventures.
Industry veteran Wilco Schoonderbeek, former Director of Investments at horticultural investor Horticoop, joins the company as a Board Observer. He said growers urgently need predictable operations in an increasingly unpredictable labour market.
“When labour is uncertain, everything else becomes uncertain,” Schoonderbeek said. “Greenhouse operations need resilience, not temporary fixes. Automation solves the biggest bottleneck growers are facing. The robot shows up where the work needs to happen and just does it. Growers finally have predictable operations.”
A fast‑growing team with global ambition
Founded in 2025 by Renji John and Sherry Kunjachan, eternal.ag now employs 26 people across Europe and India. The company is headquartered in Cologne, with an additional engineering office in Bengaluru, reflecting its global development model.
The start-up positions its technology as a direct answer to growers’ biggest operational risk: labour uncertainty. By handling physically demanding and repetitive crop work, the robots aim to reduce labour dependency while delivering uniform, high‑quality harvesting at scale.
