When the founder of the successful fintech company Ebury, partly owned by Santander, leaves the world of digital payments and invests capital in pistachio processing, it looks not just like a change of industry, but a rethinking of where money and scaling skills are heading today.
Salvador García, together with David Soler, launched Víridi Horizons in 2022, a company with full vertical integration: from nursery to premium paste production at a new factory in Alcobendas. Already now they own 1200 hectares, with the same amount under management, and the goal is 5–10 thousand hectares in the next three years. Revenue forecast for the current year is one million euros, doubling in 2027.
Pistachios in Spain are experiencing a boom: over a decade, the area has grown more than 13 times, but the country still produces only 1% of the world's volume. Meanwhile, the European market demands up to 200 thousand tons annually, and the Spanish product is valued for its taste and quality above Californian or Iranian. It is this gap between supply and demand, plus resistance to inflation and the limited availability of suitable land, that has attracted the attention of fintech investors.
García brings the logic of a platform business to agriculture: not just growing, but controlling the entire chain—from seeds to ingredients for chocolate, ice cream, and pastes. Víridi Application Lab was created jointly with the Polytechnic University of Madrid to develop premium components and compete with Italian Bronte. Four divisions—capital, agromanagement, processing, and ingredients—allow capturing margins that previously went to intermediaries.
For an investor, such a project is an alternative to traditional assets: long-term returns higher than many crops, agronomic risk is controllable, and demand is growing in China and India. At the same time, the money works not only for profit but also for the revival of rural areas, creating jobs and infrastructure where there was only desolation before.
The story of Víridi Horizons shows how capital earned in the digital economy returns to the real sector with new tools of professionalization. Pistachios cease to be just a nut and become an asset class where the stability of land and the potential for scale combine.
When the next successful entrepreneur asks himself where to invest the proceeds from fintech, the answer may lie not in another app, but in hectares that in ten years will bring premium margins and real products to tables across Europe.
