By Staff Writer, Global AgInvesting Media

Greenhouse tomatoes are in for a treat, as German agritech startup eternal.ag launches its first commercial product: Harvester, a fully autonomous robot designed to harvest tomatoes. Operating 22 hours a day and utilizing AI to maintain consistent cut precision, the Harvester is designed to fill the gaps left by the growing greenhouse labor shortage plaguing Europe. Labor has declined as much as 30% since 2010.

“When labor is uncertain, everything else becomes uncertain. Greenhouse operations need resilience, not temporary fixes or pushing problems into the future. Automation solves the biggest bottleneck that growers are facing. The robot shows up where the work needs to happen and just does it. Growers finally have predictable operations,” said Wilco Schoonderbeek, board observer at eternal.ag and former director of investments at Horticoop, in a press release.

eternal.ag was founded in 2025, with a 26-person team headquartered in Cologne. It has raised €8 million in funding from Simon Capital, EquityPitchr Ventures and Backbone Ventures combined for its Harvester product.

Building Up Greenhouse Productivity

Based on the principle of building resilience in food production, the company’s primary product is its AI-powered harvesting robot intended to solve the industry’s most significant bottleneck: labor volatility.

eternal.ag’s harvesters are fully autonomous, requiring no human operators to function within existing greenhouse infrastructures. The robots are designed for high-intensity execution, capable of operating for up to 22 hours a day. By utilizing AI, the systems continuously learn and adapt to their environment, improving picking efficiency and quality over time.

The company’s broader mission focuses on the necessity of greenhouses as a sustainable solution to rising food demand and climate change, using robotics to ensure these facilities can operate at maximum efficiency.

“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 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.”

Key Value Propositions of Harvester

• Labor Independence: The technology mitigates risks associated with labor shortages or staff turnover, ensuring that harvesting continues consistently regardless of human availability.
• Scalability: Because the robots do not require structural changes to a greenhouse, growers can deploy them into current workflows to scale operations predictably.
• Operational Certainty: By turning manual crop work into a controlled, automated process, Eternal aims to reduce the exposure of food producers to market volatility and climate-related challenges.

Keeping the Future in Mind

By 2040, the company envisions fully automated greenhouse operations powered by robotics, requiring no manual operations.

“Climate change, labor shortages, and rising demand are pushing food production to its limits,” said Niklas Leske, Principal at Simon Capital. 

“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.”

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