Dutch Startup's Dry Seed Tech Just Landed $2.8M to Shake Up Farming

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-11

### A Seed Treatment That Skips the Water Gravity Gardens, a Nijmegen-based AgTech startup, just raised €2.6 million ($2.8 million) in Seed funding. Their goal? To bring a completely dry, chemical-free seed activation technology to market. Unlike conventional methods, their process improves crop establishment without adding water, chemicals, or any coating to the seed. The round combined equity investment with EFRO regional development funding. Backers included VP Capital, Brightlands Venture Partners (BVP), and Graduate Ventures, plus a group of private investors. This follows earlier support from StartLife and a Rabobank innovation loan, pushing total funding past €3 million ($3.2 million). > "The most impactful innovations are often the ones that improve the foundations of a system. Seeds are exactly that foundation," said Erica van Eeghen, Senior Manager Ventures at VP Capital. "Gravity Gardens has developed a technology that could make stronger crop establishment accessible to many more farmers while using fewer natural resources. That is what makes this investment so compelling." ### Why Dry Matters Founded in 2024 by Paulino Valdés (CEO) and Robin Le Vigouroux (CTO), Gravity Gardens developed its technology with support from the European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre (ESA BIC) Noordwijk. Their process uses no water, no chemicals, and leaves no coating on the seed. So what's the big deal? Conventional seed priming is wet. It involves hydrating the seed, holding it under controlled conditions, then drying it again. That introduces handling constraints, capacity limits, and costs at every step. As a result, the economics only ever worked for high-value vegetable and flower seeds. For the vast majority of crops by volume, seed activation was never even considered. By removing water, Gravity Gardens changes the economics. There's no hydration stage to control and nothing to dry off. Where priming traditionally improves germination and uniformity, Gravity Gardens focuses on vigour: how fast and how strongly a crop establishes itself once in the ground. ### Vigour: The Number That Decides Your Season "Every seed company in Europe has a seed lot sitting in storage that germinates at grade A quality on the bench and then disappoints in the field," said Valdés. "Germination matters, but it is not the number that decides your season. Vigour is, and vigour is the first thing you lose as a lot ages or as the spring turns against you." He added: "Priming has been the industry's answer for forty years and it is a good answer, but it is a wet one, and the cost and complications that come with that are why it only ever made sense for a handful of high-value crops. What we have is dry, which takes those costs out. Cheap enough for field crops, and aimed at the thing that actually decides the season. That combination is what has not existed before." ### Trials and Partnerships Gravity Gardens reports that its technology has undergone seven external trials, including validation experiments conducted by Vertify. The company operates its own research, development, and production facility in Nijmegen. It also runs active programmes with Vertify, HLB, Oost NL, and Foodvalley, through which it accessed an SME Innovation Voucher. "Germination is the most critical phase in plant development," the company noted. "Gravity Gardens' platform stimulates the plant's natural power, and its cost-competitive technology can be applied in a wide variety of crops." With this fresh funding, Gravity Gardens plans to scale its dry seed activation technology, making it accessible to more farmers across Europe and beyond. If successful, it could transform how seeds are treated, especially for field crops where cost has always been a barrier.