A nine-seat electric aircraft with a 400km range sounds like a short hop. For the regional routes it targets, that is the whole market. VAERIDION, the Munich startup behind it, has raised 30M euros to build the first conforming prototype.
The Series A2 was led by Dutch investor SHIFT Invest and national institution Invest-NL, with World Fund, Project A and Vsquared Ventures returning. Total raised is now around 60M euros, and the company has also been selected for a 94.5M euro EU Innovation Fund grant.
Batteries, not hydrogen
The Microliner runs entirely on battery electric propulsion. Founders Ivor van Dartel and Sebastian Seemann, both former Airbus managers, started the company in 2021 and argue electric planes can do for short-haul aviation what electric cars did for road transport.
The quieter airframe is pitched at small airfields, which is where the business case lives. Regional connections lost to rail and road could return without new runways or large airport slots.
Commercial service is targeted for 2030. Propulsion and battery systems are already being tested at the company’s own facility in Oberpfaffenhofen, and the new equity is earmarked for the first airframe built to production standards.
Why Europe is the venue
Aircraft of this size need certification pathways and public co-funding, both of which the EU has been assembling. The Innovation Fund grant is larger than the equity round, a reminder that deep tech in Europe is still financed as much by public programmes as by venture capital.
The obvious risk is timeline. Electric aviation has produced plenty of renders and few certified aircraft, and 2030 is four years and several certification gates away.
Invest-NL gives the round a national-infrastructure flavour rather than a pure venture one, tying Dutch capital to a German airframe aimed at routes across the continent.
