Robots stay still, plants move – SAIA Agrobotics raises €10 million for its inverted greenhouse automation model

SAIA Agrobotics, a developer of robotics for greenhouse rising out of Ede, has carried out a brand new €10 million Sequence A funding spherical to flee the industrial rollout of its automatic greenhouse system, which objectives to enhance gash yields and sever labour necessities all over controlled-environment agriculture.

The spherical was once led by Check24, in collaboration with the EIC Fund and reward traders Navus Ventures and Oost NL – bringing total funding to over €20 million.

SAIA was once furthermore one eight startups that offered its expertise on the 2025 EU-Startups Summit as phase of the cohort of EIC-backed startups, highlighting its role among Europe’s emerging AgTech innovators.

“At SAIA we now not too long within the past carried out the area’s first automatic greenhouse, where plants plod to the robot once every week for scanning and harvesting,” says Dr Ruud Barth, CEO and Founding father of SAIA. “We aim for a 20% prolong in yields with a 50% total greenhouse labour sever value. Right here’s a huge step forward in offering a local, resilient and sustainable food present.”

This new Sequence A funding spherical for SAIA comes at a time when investment into European AgTech and automation startups remains active.

In August 2025, Norway’s Saga Robotics secured €9.5 million to scale its independent farm-robot platform for greenhouse and silent-fruit operations within the UK and US. Within the period in-between, UK-primarily primarily based Wild Bioscience raised €51 million in October 2025 to advance its AI-pushed precision-breeding expertise, reflecting rising self perception in high-affect AgTech alternatives. Earlier within the twelve months, CroBio from Cheshire obtained about €805k in grant funding to create enhanced microbes for agriculture.

Collectively, these 2025 developments announce sustained investor inch for food for digital and robotic systems improving yields and sustainability. Within this landscape, SAIA’s reach to automatic greenhouse rising stands out as a solid regional instance of Dutch expertise driving effectivity and labour-saving innovation in controlled-environment agriculture.

Georg Heusgen, Director at Check24, says, ”The SAIA rising systems permits harvesting 52 weeks a twelve months, guaranteeing as a end result of this reality greater annual yields per square meter. The SAIA harvesting system applies what everyone is conscious of from enterprise to the greenhouse sector. The product comes to the robot and now not vi ce versa. There, below a standardised environment, robots can deleaf and harvest with an accuracy of over 99%, guaranteeing greater product quality and the promised labor label savings.“​

Worldwide, the request for wholesome, unique, and sustainably produced food will prolong by between 30 to 50% within the arrival decades – as per SAIA figures.

Dutch greenhouse horticulture expertise is the market forerunner within the optimum production of, as an illustration, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. The worldwide request for these high-tech greenhouses will develop to 5000 hectares per twelve months of newbuilt initiatives, primarily primarily based on the Rabobank.

On the opposite hand, the firm outlines that the pinnacle bottleneck is the provision of labour and records to care for these greenhouses operational. Labour costs are skyrocketing and the want for automation is now urgent.

Jaap Zijlstra, Director at Navus Ventures, adds, “SAIA Agrobotics has developed innovative ideas and expertise within the sphere of plants, automation, and logistics, constructing a brand new reach to greenhouse rising, with the aptitude to take a important step in environment friendly and sustainable food production.”

Founded in 2017, SAIA Agrobotics advocates a systemic replace; their robot does now not enter the greenhouse, nevertheless the plant comes to the robot as a substitute. This model the robot has elephantine visibility and access spherical the plant to enable quickly harvests and plant maintenance, while allowing the plant to develop in an optimum environment for plants.

CEO Barth notes that earlier this twelve months the important buyer, Growers United, has deployed the important substances of the system at their facilities and is widely the roar of SAIA expertise on-put.

Wout Morrenhof, investment supervisor at Oost NL, adds: “SAIA is an staunch instance of a startup that has developed from Wageningen University & Compare and has an innovative solution for a important social roar. Digitisation and robotisation are important to manufacture ample wholesome and sustainable food now and in due route. SAIA has developed strongly accurate via the last two years and is willing for the additional commercialisation of their product.”

SAIA’s successful financing spherical follows a six twelve months duration of technological building, which has resulted in extra than one world patents.

After an initial pre-Seed investment by affect and DeepTech traders SHIFT Invest, Innovation Industries, and Oost NL and thereafter a Seed spherical led by Navus Ventures and Oost NL, the brand new financing spherical brings the total funds raised to over €20 million, permits SAIA to enter the market as early as subsequent twelve months.

Svetoslava Georgieva, Chair of the EIC Fund Board, added: “The EIC Fund is overjoyed to abet SAIA’s potential to revolutionise sustainable food production via digitisation and automation, aligning with their suggestions to enhance innovative agrotechnology. They aim to sever total greenhouse labour by 50% while rising yields by 20%.”