VitalFluid, the Eindhoven company that turns water, air and electricity into a chemical-free fungicide, has raised EUR 17.2 million — roughly $19.9 million — to push its "lightning in a box" crop protection system into commercial berry fields and orchards in the UK and the United States.

The round was co-led by Invest-NL, the Dutch state-backed investment institution, which committed EUR 4 million, and Alder Tree Investments. Every existing shareholder followed on: Horticoop, Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM), Future Food Fund, Graduate Ventures, Innovation Industries, VDL Groep and Goeie Grutten Impact Fonds. The total also includes a EUR 2.7 million innovation credit from RVO, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. The deal was announced on August 27, 2026. Chief executive Erik Hertel said the investment "confirms the potential of our technology to make a fundamental contribution to a more sustainable and future-proof food system."

What the company does

VitalFluid was founded in 2014 by Paul Leenders and Polo van Ooij as a spin-out from Eindhoven University of Technology, where the pair researched plasma-activated water. The idea borrows from weather: lightning fixes nitrogen and oxygen into reactive compounds that rain carries to the soil. VitalFluid's machines reproduce that reaction on a farm, running an electrical discharge through air and water, then stabilising the resulting compounds in a liquid growers spray like a conventional treatment.

The output is a fungicide substitute with no chemical residue, made on site from three inputs a grower already has. Its product, Vidar, targets greenhouse, orchard and open-field operations, and trials have covered strawberries, cucumbers, apples and tomatoes against mildew, fusarium and venturia. The company employs roughly 25 people.

The numbers behind the round

This is a step change in scale. VitalFluid raised about EUR 2 million via crowdfunding earlier in its life and closed EUR 5 million in April 2024 for market introduction. The new EUR 17.2 million takes reported lifetime funding past EUR 22 million — more than three times everything raised before it.

The composition matters as much as the amount. Invest-NL's EUR 4 million is a sovereign endorsement of a technology that must displace an entrenched agrochemical supply chain, while the RVO credit is repayable public money tied to milestones rather than equity. That every prior backer re-upped, including horticulture supplier Horticoop and industrial group VDL, suggests the commercial evidence has held up. VitalFluid says the system is already deployed across more than 100 hectares of commercial UK strawberry production with growers including Hall Hunter Partnership, Angus Growers and EC Drummond.

Why the timing matters

European growers are running out of chemistry. The EU has withdrawn approval for a long list of active substances, resistance is eroding what remains, and retailers are tightening residue limits faster than regulators are. Soft fruit sits at the sharp end of that squeeze: high value, high disease pressure, thin margins, short shelf life. A treatment that leaves nothing behind is a direct answer, and the UK berry sector has become its proving ground.

The money is earmarked for exactly that: accelerating the UK rollout, opening a US market entry, and extending deployment from strawberries into apples and grapes. The harder test is manufacturing, since on-farm plasma generation only scales if the hardware is cheap, reliable and serviceable in the field. This is the first round large enough to find out.

Source

EU-Startups — "Eindhoven's VitalFluid raises EUR 17.2 million to protect crops with 'lightning in a box' technology"