EIC Accelerator Winner MetoMotion and the Tomato Robot Race

Tomatoes are among the hardest crops to hand over to a machine: the fruit bruises, the trusses hang among leaves and stems, and the light in a greenhouse changes all day. MetoMotion, a start-up from Yokne'am Illit in northern Israel, built a robot that does it anyway. GRoW, short for Greenhouse Robotic Worker, drives between the rows on an autonomous vehicle, finds ripe vine tomatoes with 3D cameras and picks them with two arms, one on each side of the row, before packing them into crates.

The European Commission's list of winners for the 5 June 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot that preceded today's EIC Accelerator, names METOMOTION LTD of Karmiel, Israel, for GRoW, with no partner company on the project. The grant, signed on 22 November 2019, paid €2,067,340.63 of a €2,953,343.75 project that ran from 1 November 2019 to 30 April 2022, according to CORDIS. Three years later the robot was harvesting in a Dutch greenhouse. Whether MetoMotion still is could not be established.

Where MetoMotion Stands Now

The Israeli Companies Registrar lists MetoMotion Ltd as an active private company, incorporated on 28 September 2016, with its last annual report filed for 2025 and its address at HaYetsira Street 6 in Yokne'am Illit, according to the registrar's open company data. That is the same address as on the company website. The register does not publish accounts, so revenue, losses and staff numbers are not public.

Beyond the register, the trail stops in early 2024. The newest item on MetoMotion's news page is a NoCamels article of 21 December 2023, and the newest independent report found is an Israel21c story of 10 January 2024. No funding round, customer, product release or trade fair appearance by MetoMotion after that date could be found. Ridder, its Dutch distribution partner, still has a harvesting robot page inviting growers to "Reserve now", but the page does not name MetoMotion and lists no customers. Because a register filing for 2025 sits against more than two years without public news, this article records the company's status as unknown rather than active or dormant.

The Technology: Two Arms, a Camera and a Crate

Harvesting robots for open fields and orchards have been in development for decades, but tomatoes grown under glass are a hard case. The fruit has to be told apart from leaves and stems in shifting light, judged for ripeness and cut without bruising. CORDIS describes MetoMotion's answer as an "advanced 3D vision system to clearly identify ripe fruits among leaves and stems", "extensible multiple robotic arms to increase harvest speed", "touch sensitive terminals to avoid damage" and an autonomous vehicle with a boxing system that packs the fruit, according to the Phase 1 fact sheet. The two arms are the main difference from single-arm prototypes: GRoW picks both sides of a row in one pass. Growers set the ripeness level and working area through a mobile app, NoCamels reported.

The performance claims vary by source. Adi Nir told the EU's CORDIS Results in Brief in September 2022 that the robot picked tomatoes "with an accuracy of over 90%, which matches the performance of an average human picker", and promised "cost savings of up to 50% for farmers, reducing man-hours by up to 80%". In February 2023 he told The Times of Israel that the robots "reduce labor needs by about 90%", that they took 16 seconds per cluster, and that five robots could harvest a 50,000 square metre greenhouse in about a week. The project's final periodic report gives a harvesting rate of more than 550 kg an hour. None of these figures has been published by an independent tester.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

GRoW was MetoMotion's second EU grant. A six-month Phase 1 feasibility study from July to December 2018 received €50,000 towards a cost of €71,429, according to CORDIS; it forecast "about 200 robots/year, generating revenues of about € 30 mln in 3 years of operation". The Phase 2 application won in a crowded round: of 2,025 proposals submitted to the 5 June 2019 cut-off, 94 were proposed for funding, according to the Commission's flash call information for that round.

The Phase 2 project was to take GRoW from technology readiness level 6 to a commercial launch: finish the commercial design, validate prototypes in commercial greenhouses, build "up to 5 robots", set up a distribution chain and launch a new website. The final periodic report, covering November 2020 to April 2022, says the robotic arm, end-effector and boxing system were "produced and tested", that fruit detection reached "almost the 100% of accuracy", and that the vehicle's chassis, traction and steering were integrated. It lists the validation in commercial environments and the manufacture of up to five robots as "expected results until the end of the project", so the report itself does not confirm them.

Other sources fill part of that gap. MetoMotion completed "a successful season of robotic tomato harvesting with De-Ruiter (Bayer)" in the first half of 2021, its investor Trendlines reported in its half-year results. GRoW was launched at GreenTech Amsterdam in June 2022, where it won the Robot Challenge as the entry with "the greatest impact on the horticultural sector", Hortidaily reported. By November 2022 one robot was harvesting at RedStar in Maasdijk, according to Hortidaily, and in March 2023 Ridder announced a multi-year agreement under which RedStar would buy multiple robots, with full commercial use at one site targeted by the end of 2023. How many robots were delivered has not been published; NoCamels wrote in December 2023 only that "several" had gone to RedStar.

1. Commercial version of GRoWDeliveredLaunched at GreenTech in June 2022 and harvesting at RedStar from 2022, per Hortidaily and Ridder.
2. Distribution chain for first marketsDeliveredRidder took on global marketing, sales and service in 2021.
3. Up to 5 robots manufacturedPartly"Several" robots at RedStar; the number built is not public.
4. Over €20M revenue by 2024, about 2,000 systems in 5 yearsNot achievedTwo customers in February 2023; no revenue or fleet figures published since.
5. Cucumbers, eggplants and deleafingNo evidencePlanned in 2022; no product announced.

What MetoMotion Achieved After the Award

The private money came from the greenhouse industry. In August 2019, two months after the EIC cut-off, an unnamed Dutch greenhouse company invested $1.5 million, Hortidaily reported. In September 2021 MetoMotion closed a $5 million round led by Ridder and Navus Ventures, the family investment office of the Dutch company Lely, with Sirius VC taking part, according to CTech. Ridder said it had invested since 2019 and would distribute the robot worldwide, Hortidaily wrote. CTech names The Trendlines Group, the Israel Innovation Authority and the Technion DRIVE accelerator as earlier backers.

Total funding is reported inconsistently. The Times of Israel put it at $10 million in February 2023, while CB Insights lists $6.5 million. In the same Times of Israel interview, MetoMotion said it was raising $8 million to scale production, had two customers in the Netherlands and aimed for 10 to 20 installations in 2023. No closing of that round and no installation count have been announced. MetoMotion does not appear on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which had 326 organisations when it was checked for this article; that is expected, because the 2019 award was a grant only. MetoMotion is also not on the current Trendlines portfolio page. Trendlines wrote off 12 portfolio companies in 2023 and 2024 but declined to name them, saying in its answers to shareholder questions in April 2025 that a write-off "does not always mean that the portfolio company has ceased operations". Whether MetoMotion is among them is not public.

Why Europe Should Care

MetoMotion is an Israeli company, but its market was European from the start: the grant, the investors and the first paying customer are all European, and the robots work in Dutch glasshouses. The labour problem it targets is a European one too. The Commission's Vision for Agriculture and Food of 19 February 2025 notes that "only 12% of farmers are under 40 years old" and promises a generational renewal strategy and an EU digital strategy for agriculture. Harvest robots are one answer to who will pick the crops.

The market has not waited. In November 2025 Hortidaily reported that Four Growers had put a first fleet of tomato harvesting robots to work at the Dutch grower Westburg, claiming "up to 50% labor savings". MetoMotion was the first to win a GreenTech prize with a working tomato harvester; whether it is still in the race is the open question.

The Verdict

MetoMotion has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.