VÆRIDION raises a €30m Series A2 and wins a €94.5m EU Innovation Fund grant for its nine-seat electric aircraft
VÆRIDION closed a €30m Series A2 led by SHIFT Invest and Invest-NL and was selected for a €94.5m EU Innovation Fund grant for its nine-seat Microliner.
VÆRIDION, the Munich electric aircraft developer, said on 5 November 2026 that it had closed a €30 million Series A2 round and been selected for a €94.5 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund, taking combined new funding above €124 million. SHIFT Invest and Invest-NL led the equity round. Existing backers World Fund, Project A and Vsquared Ventures took part, alongside PAYBACK founder Alexander Rittweger. The company says it has now raised about €60 million from private investors.
The grant covers a project the company calls CAROLUS and is earmarked for a final assembly facility at Oberpfaffenhofen Airport near Munich, where VÆRIDION opened a production and test site in March 2026 and powered up its electric engine for the first time. The company says it was one of 12 large-scale projects selected from 358 applications, the only aviation project in that group and the only German company in it. The grant agreement is expected to be signed in 2027, so the selection still depends on that signature.
The aircraft is the Microliner, an all-electric design carrying nine passengers over 400 kilometres, or roughly 10 cubic metres of freight in a cargo version. It is being developed against EASA CS-23 requirements, with a glider-inspired wing, modular battery packs and a multi-engine, single-propeller drivetrain. The company targets an operating cost below €0.40 per seat kilometre. Aviation International News reports that manufacturing of the first conforming prototype is planned for early 2027, with flight testing to follow and EASA type certification targeted for 2030.
The equity money pays for that first conforming aircraft plus integrated battery and propulsion testing on a ground rig and in the wind tunnel, while the grant pays for the factory. Programme partners named by Aviation International News include GKN Aerospace, Evolito, Molicel, MT-Propeller and Drive System Design. VÆRIDION holds provisional commitments for more than 130 aircraft worth over €730 million, with Belgian aviation group ASL as launch customer. “This equity round enables us to build our first conforming aircraft,” said founder and chief executive Ivor van Dartel. Thijs Gitmans, general partner at SHIFT Invest, said: “Regional aviation is one of the clearest cases where electrification makes both environmental and commercial sense.”
Why it matters for AgTech founders: read the capital stack, not the aircraft. Roughly three euros of public grant arrived for every euro of equity, and the two pots point at different things. Equity buys one prototype, the grant buys the plant. That split is open to anyone building heavy European hardware, harvesters, barn robots, spot sprayers, and it is close to the only realistic way a pre-revenue machine company finances a factory without handing over the company. Three caveats travel with it. The order book came first, because 130 provisional commitments worth €730 million are what made both the equity and the grant defensible, which makes a letter-of-intent book a financing instrument rather than a sales artefact. The grant is a selection and not cash, with signature expected in 2027, so a bridge has to exist on the equity side. And a 2030 certification target means this round has to carry four more years of burn, which makes the next raise, not this one, the real test for any deep tech hardware plan.
VÆRIDION raises a €30m Series A2 and wins a €94.5m EU Innovation Fund grant for its nine-seat electric aircraft
SHIFT Invest and Invest-NL led the equity round. The EU Innovation Fund picked the Munich company's CAROLUS project, with the money earmarked for a final assembly line near Munich.
VÆRIDION, the Munich electric aircraft developer, said on 5 November 2026 that it had closed a €30 million Series A2 round and been selected for a €94.5 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund, taking combined new funding above €124 million. SHIFT Invest and Invest-NL led the equity round. Existing backers World Fund, Project A and Vsquared Ventures took part, alongside PAYBACK founder Alexander Rittweger. The company says it has now raised about €60 million from private investors.
The grant covers a project the company calls CAROLUS and is earmarked for a final assembly facility at Oberpfaffenhofen Airport near Munich, where VÆRIDION opened a production and test site in March 2026 and powered up its electric engine for the first time. The company says it was one of 12 large-scale projects selected from 358 applications, the only aviation project in that group and the only German company in it. The grant agreement is expected to be signed in 2027, so the selection still depends on that signature.
The aircraft is the Microliner, an all-electric design carrying nine passengers over 400 kilometres, or roughly 10 cubic metres of freight in a cargo version. It is being developed against EASA CS-23 requirements, with a glider-inspired wing, modular battery packs and a multi-engine, single-propeller drivetrain. The company targets an operating cost below €0.40 per seat kilometre. Aviation International News reports that manufacturing of the first conforming prototype is planned for early 2027, with flight testing to follow and EASA type certification targeted for 2030.
The equity money pays for that first conforming aircraft plus integrated battery and propulsion testing on a ground rig and in the wind tunnel, while the grant pays for the factory. Programme partners named by Aviation International News include GKN Aerospace, Evolito, Molicel, MT-Propeller and Drive System Design. VÆRIDION holds provisional commitments for more than 130 aircraft worth over €730 million, with Belgian aviation group ASL as launch customer. “This equity round enables us to build our first conforming aircraft,” said founder and chief executive Ivor van Dartel. Thijs Gitmans, general partner at SHIFT Invest, said: “Regional aviation is one of the clearest cases where electrification makes both environmental and commercial sense.”
Why it matters for AgTech founders: read the capital stack, not the aircraft. Roughly three euros of public grant arrived for every euro of equity, and the two pots point at different things. Equity buys one prototype, the grant buys the plant. That split is open to anyone building heavy European hardware, harvesters, barn robots, spot sprayers, and it is close to the only realistic way a pre-revenue machine company finances a factory without handing over the company. Three caveats travel with it. The order book came first, because 130 provisional commitments worth €730 million are what made both the equity and the grant defensible, which makes a letter-of-intent book a financing instrument rather than a sales artefact. The grant is a selection and not cash, with signature expected in 2027, so a bridge has to exist on the equity side. And a 2030 certification target means this round has to carry four more years of burn, which makes the next raise, not this one, the real test for any deep tech hardware plan.
