€5M Funding Backs Aardaia’s Bid to Turn a Forgotten Legume Into Europe’s Next Protein Crop

Dutch agtech startup Aardaia has raised €5 million in a seed round led by Point Nine, with participation from new investors Astanor and Grey Silo Ventures alongside a group of angel investors. Returning investor FoodLabs, which led the company’s pre-seed round, also joined.

Aardaia breeds new crops from wild and forgotten plant species using genomic sequencing, phenotyping and AI-assisted prediction, without genetic modification or gene editing. Its flagship crop is the aardaker (Lathyrus tuberosus), a protein-rich tuber that fixes its own nitrogen and requires no synthetic fertiliser. According to the company, the crop could produce up to five times more protein per hectare than any crop currently farmed, a target it is breeding toward rather than one already achieved at scale.

Targeting Europe’s protein import gap

The aardaker pairs the yield potential of a root crop with the nitrogen-fixing properties of a legume. Aardaia positions it as a possible domestic alternative to imported protein crops such as soy, much of which Europe currently sources from South America. The company says it is screening three-quarters of a million unique aardaker genotypes this year and aims to expand that to two million in 2027 with the new funding.

“For most of history, inventing a new crop took millennia, so the world settled for improving the few it already had. We can now design crops on demand, drawing on hundreds of millions of years of evolution to find plants that are already built to win. The aardaker is our first, and this round lets us put our foot on the accelerator,” said Pádraic Flood, co-founder and CEO of Aardaia.

Flood, who holds a PhD in plant photosynthesis genetics from Wageningen University and previously worked at the Max Planck Institute and as Head of Genetics at Infarm, co-founded the company with Mike Henske, who has a background in agribusiness from Indigo and Solynta. Aardaia says its twelve-person team spans ten nationalities and includes six PhD holders across plant breeding, agronomy and computational biology.

Backing from food-focused investors

Point Nine, an early-stage venture firm typically known for software and AI investments, led the round. “At Point Nine we invest mainly in software and AI, so a plant-breeding company wasn’t an obvious fit. But after my first call with Pádraic and Mike I was hooked,” said Christoph Janz, Partner at Point Nine.

Grey Silo Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Cereal Docks Group, framed its investment around supply chain diversification. “Their approach expands the range of crops that underpin agriculture, starting with the domestication of nitrogen-fixing, long-forgotten crop aardaker. If brought to scale, this bears clear implications for more resilient and diversified supply chains,” said Matteo Leonardi, Investment Manager at Grey Silo Ventures.