Vaeridion raises €30M Series A2 to build its first electric Microliner
Dutch investors back a Munich nine-seat electric plane after Lilium. €30M builds the first prototype, with a €94.5M EU grant and 130-plus conditional orders behind it.
Also see more funding coverage: /funding/
Founded 2021 · Munich, Germany
Munich’s Vaeridion raises €30 million in a Series A2 led by SHIFT Invest and Invest-NL to build the first conforming prototype of its nine-seat, battery-electric Microliner.
Germany’s electric aviation scene has had a brutal two years, and yet a Munich startup building a nine-seat electric plane just closed its largest equity round. Below, I lay out the round, the company, the market it sells into and what Dutch money behind a Bavarian aircraft tells us.
Get the Weekly brief
The week’s rounds, last calls and events, every Monday.
€30 million from two Dutch investors, with a €94.5 million EU grant lined up
The round was announced on 5 November 2026, as Tech.eu reported. SHIFT Invest, a Dutch venture firm, and Invest-NL, the Dutch national investment institution, co-led it. Existing investors World Fund, Project A and Vsquared Ventures followed on, and both Aviation Week and AIN name Payback founder Alexander Rittweger among the participants. Vaeridion has now raised about €60 million to date, according to Tech.eu.
The money goes into hardware. “This equity round enables us to build our first conforming aircraft,” co-founder and CEO Ivor van Dartel said in the announcement. Aviation Week adds integrated battery and propulsion tests on a “copper bird” ground rig plus wind-tunnel work. AIN reports that manufacturing of the conforming prototype starts in early 2027, followed by flight testing.
The equity sits next to a larger public check. The European Commission selected Vaeridion for a €94.5 million EU Innovation Fund grant for its Carolus project, a final assembly facility at Oberpfaffenhofen Airport near Munich, with the grant agreement expected to be signed in 2027, according to Aviation Week. Equity and grant together exceed €120 million, as dpa totals it.
Two ex-Airbus managers in a former Lilium battery building
Van Dartel and Sebastian Seemann, both former Airbus managers, founded Vaeridion in Munich in 2021 (Tech.eu). The product is the Microliner, a fully battery-electric aircraft for nine passengers or cargo with a 400 km range, built to fly between small regional airfields, with commercial service targeted for 2030. Aviation Week gives up to 550 km with four passengers and certification under EASA’s CS-23 rules, which AIN dates to 2030.
Van Dartel told Tech.eu that “over the past year, we have turned the Microliner from a validated design into hardware.” Vaeridion completed its preliminary design review in June 2026, according to Aviation Week. In September 2025 it leased a former Lilium battery building at Oberpfaffenhofen and hired 11 ex-Lilium engineers (electrive), then opened the site in March 2026 (FlightGlobal). “Our propulsion and battery technology is now being tested at our own facility in Oberpfaffenhofen,” van Dartel said. Lilium’s old battery building now tests someone else’s batteries, which is one way to keep know-how in Bavaria.
Commercial interest came early. Vaeridion reports conditional orders for more than 130 aircraft worth over €730 million, with Belgium’s ASL Group as launch customer (Aviation Week, AIN). The previous round, a €14 million Series A led by World Fund in December 2024, is logged on Vaeridion’s Sesamers profile.
Electric aircraft estimates $5 billion apart, and none for nine-seaters
Analysts disagree on the size of the electric aircraft market by billions. ResearchAndMarkets (June 2025) put it at $8.05 billion in 2025, rising to $17.5 billion by 2030, a 16.5 percent CAGR. IMARC Group (updated September 2026) puts the same year at $13.4 billion, growing 14.6 percent a year to $47.2 billion by 2034. Both blend military aircraft, rotorcraft and hybrids, and no reliable sizing exists for the battery-electric commuter segment Vaeridion sells into.
The replacement case comes from the company itself. Vaeridion counts more than 21,000 small turboprops flying regional routes worldwide, with an average age of 23 years, a figure dpa reported as the company’s own.
Our fundraising data gives the round its scale. French hybrid-electric aircraft developer VoltAero raised €32 million in a Series B led by TESI in November 2022 (electrive), and last month hydrogen airship maker HyLight closed a €13 million Series A. That puts Vaeridion in VoltAero’s bracket before a single conforming aircraft exists. For a company at this stage, a market growing 15 to 16 percent a year matters less than the order book and the certification calendar, since revenue starts only once EASA signs off.
Dutch money, a Brussels grant and a Bavarian test site
Germany’s electric aviation record is hard to read past. Lilium went insolvent twice and shut down, and Volocopter was sold to Chinese investors after its bankruptcy, dpa recalled. The US has struggled at nine seats too. Eviation paused its nine-passenger Alice and laid off most of its staff in February 2025 (Flying), and Heart Aerospace moved its headquarters from Gothenburg to Los Angeles two months later (AviTrader).
How many investors would have written a €30 million check for a battery-electric aircraft in Munich after Lilium? The good news is that this round shows European capital crossing borders to back the companies still building. The leads are Dutch, the test site is Bavarian and the largest check, still to be signed, comes from Brussels. For once, the European Union played as a team on a single aircraft. Vaeridion also drew support from EIB Advisory in March 2026.
Imagine if the Innovation Fund agreement is signed on schedule in 2027. Vaeridion would then have its final assembly line financed while its first conforming aircraft is still being built.
Copper bird first, certification in 2030
The next milestones are public and dated. Copper bird tests at Oberpfaffenhofen come first, prototype manufacturing starts in early 2027, the grant agreement follows the same year, and type certification is planned for 2030 (Aviation Week, AIN). Munich has had its share of air-taxi promises. Vaeridion’s goal is smaller and more useful, a certified nine-seater carrying passengers 400 km between small airfields, assembled in Bavaria. A European operator flying that plane in 2030 would be momentum the whole sector can use. Let’s build it!
