The best-funded Web3 and blockchain startups in the Netherlands in 2026

Four Dutch startups in the Web3 and blockchain sector raised a combined total of more than €208 million, according to a review of funding data. The clear outlier is Planck Network, which closed a €200 million Series B in January 2025. The remaining three companies, Volareo, Aurea Imaging and Finturi, raised between €2 million and €3.1 million.

The range is broad. Planck Network builds decentralised GPU infrastructure for AI workloads, Volareo develops an open-source smart speaker with blockchain integration, Aurea Imaging supplies precision data to fruit growers, and Finturi focuses on electronic invoicing for freelancers. What connects the four is that each uses blockchain or decentralised technology as a technical foundation, not as an end product.

Investors in this corner of the market are paying less and less attention to the Web3 label itself and increasingly to the concrete application layer beneath it. The question is no longer whether decentralised technology works, but whether it solves a specific sector problem that is harder to address with existing infrastructure.

Planck Network attracts by far the most capital

Planck Network, founded in 2023 in Amsterdam, is the largest capital raiser in this overview. The company closed a €200 million Series B round in January 2025. Planck Network builds a decentralised GPU network on which AI models can be trained and deployed. The proposition is that computing power no longer needs to be centralised with a handful of large cloud providers, but can run distributed across a network of participants.

The timing coincides with strong demand for GPU capacity for AI applications, with wait times at major cloud providers regularly increasing throughout 2024 and 2025. Details about the composition of the investor group in the Series B round are not public. Given the size of the round, it ranks as one of the larger funding transactions in the Dutch tech sector in recent years.

Volareo positions itself as a privacy-focused alternative in voice commerce

Volareo, founded in 2018 and based in Rotterdam, raised €3.1 million in a Seed round in 2023. The company builds an open-source, decentralised smart speaker that allows users to purchase products via voice commands, support artists and convert fiat to crypto. Animoca Brands is one of the three institutional investors that backed the Seed round.

Volareo positions itself at the intersection of voice commerce and Web3, with privacy and decentralisation as its differentiating features compared with the closed ecosystems of existing smart speaker platforms. The voice commerce market grew strongly in the early 2020s, although concrete market figures for the current situation are not available. What attracts investors such as Animoca Brands is the combination of an emerging distribution channel and blockchain rails for direct payments to creators, a model that aligns with the broader creator economy thesis Animoca pursues.

Aurea Imaging raises €2.8 million for precision orchard management

Aurea Imaging, based in Utrecht and founded in 2016, closed a €2.8 million Series A round in July 2024. The investor group includes Pymwymic (which also participated in an earlier pre-Series A round), ROM Utrecht Region, Knop Ventures, Goeie Grutten Impact Fonds and BarUni Family Fund. The company has sold its phenotyping activities for plant breeders to Hiphen in order to focus exclusively on precision orchard management.

The core product is the TreeScout, a tractor-mounted sensor system that combines AI and 3D computer vision to collect data on individual trees. Aurea Imaging states that the approach can lead to yield increases of up to €3,500 per hectare and reductions in labour and agrochemical use of up to 90 percent. Investors in the fund cite the contribution to pesticide reduction and a sustainable transition in fruit growing as their motivation. The Web3 component in Aurea Imaging's architecture plays a role in how data is stored and shared, although the agri-tech application profile is central to the company's positioning.

Finturi targets invoice financing for small business owners

Finturi, founded in 2018 and operating from The Hague, raised €2 million through a funding round. The exact timing of the round and the composition of the investor group are not public. The company offers a platform for electronic invoicing and invoice financing for freelancers and small businesses, using blockchain technology for the verification and processing of invoices.

The proposition addresses a well-known pain point for small business owners: the gap between the moment of invoicing and the moment of payment. By verifying invoices through decentralised protocols, Finturi aims to lower the threshold for invoice financing compared with traditional banking routes. The combination of fintech, AI and Web3 characterises Finturi as one of the few Dutch players deploying blockchain for an everyday business administration function.

What the spread reveals about the Dutch Web3 ecosystem

The four companies display a pattern that is recognisable across the broader European Web3 scene. Large capital flows go to infrastructure layers, in this case decentralised computing power for AI, while application-focused companies in agri, fintech and consumer hardware make do with more modest rounds. The gap between Planck Network's €200 million and the other three is substantial, but it reflects an international trend in which infrastructure projects for AI and decentralised compute are particularly attractive to larger venture capital funds.

For founders and investors in the Dutch scene, this overview underscores that the Web3 label alone is insufficient to attract capital. Companies that raise funding consistently link decentralised technology to a sector-specific need, whether that is GPU scarcity, pesticide reduction in fruit growing or liquidity for small business owners. Policymakers seeking to strengthen the Dutch blockchain ecosystem can observe here that the best-funded players operate precisely at the intersection of Web3 and another sector, rather than in Web3 as a standalone domain.