Aardaia, a Wageningen-based agritech startup developing new crop varieties from wild plant species, has raised €5M in a seed round led by Point Nine, with participation from existing investor FoodLabs and new investors Astanor and Grey Silo, alongside a group of angel investors.
Founded in 2025 by Pádraic Flood and Mike Henske, the company will use the funding to expand its plant breeding platform and accelerate development of its first crop, the aardaker.
Addressing The Market Opportunity
Modern agriculture is built almost entirely on a small number of crop species that humans began domesticating thousands of years ago. The process of creating a genuinely new crop has historically taken millennia, so the agricultural system has focused on improving what already existed rather than developing alternatives from scratch.
Advances in genomics and computational biology have changed what is now possible. Aardaia was founded on the premise that the plant kingdom contains hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary adaptation that can be accessed and applied to agriculture in a fraction of the time it once required, without relying on genetic modification or gene editing.
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How The Technology Works
Aardaia’s plant breeding platform combines whole-genome sequencing, computational biology, and phenotyping to identify promising wild plant species and predict how they will perform as crops. This allows the company to accelerate the breeding process significantly compared to conventional methods, developing new varieties more efficiently by understanding plant genetics and performance characteristics before committing to lengthy field development cycles.
The company’s first product, the aardaker, is a protein-rich root crop designed to combine the high yield characteristics of root crops with the natural nitrogen-fixing ability of legumes. The result is a crop that can reduce dependence on imported protein crops and be grown without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, lowering both the cost and the environmental footprint of production for farmers.
Growth And Market Traction
Founded in 2025, Aardaia is at an early stage of commercialization, with its seed round bringing together a strong consortium of agrifood-focused investors. The participation of Point Nine as lead investor alongside Astanor, one of Europe’s leading agrifood venture funds, and Grey Silo reflects growing institutional interest in the development of new crops as a long-term solution to the limitations of the existing agricultural system.
Expansion Plans
The €5M seed round will fund the expansion of Aardaia’s plant breeding platform and the continued acceleration of the aardaker’s development toward commercial availability. The company will also use the capital to continue identifying and developing additional crop varieties from wild plant species beyond its initial focus.
Looking Ahead
Pádraic Flood, co-founder and CEO of Aardaia, described the scale of what the company is attempting and what it now has the tools to do: “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.”
About Aardaia
Aardaia is a Wageningen-based agritech company founded in 2025 by Pádraic Flood and Mike Henske. The company builds a plant breeding platform that uses whole-genome sequencing, computational biology, and phenotyping to develop new crop varieties from wild plant species without genetic modification or gene editing. Its first product, the aardaker, is a protein-rich root crop that fixes nitrogen naturally and is designed to reduce agricultural dependence on imported protein and synthetic fertilizers.
