Strategically located in the heart of Europe, Belgium fosters innovation and entrepreneurship with a multilingual and highly educated workforce. The country’s technology industry boasts a vibrant mix of start-ups, scale-ups and established companies across sectors such as fintech, healthtech, biotech and smart cities.
The country’s central location in the European Union gives it unique access to a wide range of markets, making it an attractive base for technology companies looking to expand across Europe. Major cities such as Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Leuven serve as hubs of tech activity, each with their own unique advantages.
The Belgian tech ecosystem benefits from a strong support system, including numerous incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces, providing crucial resources for startups.
Here are 10 companies that are helping to create a strong, innovative and dynamic Belgian tech ecosystem.
O’Du
Industry: Software
Amount raised in 2023: €150 million
Odoo is a comprehensive open source business application suite aimed at streamlining and optimizing various business processes for organizations of all sizes.
The company offers a wide range of integrated applications covering areas such as CRM, e-commerce, accounting, inventory management, manufacturing, project management and human resources.
The platform is highly modular and customizable, allowing businesses to select and configure the specific modules they need. Known for its user-friendly interface, extensibility, and strong community support, Odoo has become a popular choice for businesses looking for an affordable and flexible ERP solution.
Agomab Therapeutics
Industry: Healthtech
Amount raised in 2023: €94.9 million
Agomab Therapeutics is a company focused on developing innovative therapeutics to treat severe fibrotic diseases and conditions related to tissue repair and regeneration.
Agomab Therapeutics leverages its expertise in growth factor biology to create novel drug candidates aimed at modulating key pathways involved in fibrosis and tissue healing.
The company’s lead programs target diseases with high medical need and have the potential to provide new treatment options for patients suffering from conditions such as liver, lung and kidney fibrosis.
Affair Bio
Industry: Agritech
Amount raised in 2023: €70 million
Aphea.Bio is an innovative agricultural biotechnology company specializing in the development of sustainable biological solutions for crop protection and improvement.
The company combines cutting-edge expertise in microbiology, genomics and data science to create bio-based products that enhance plant health and productivity while minimizing environmental impact. The company’s flagship products harness the power of naturally occurring microorganisms to promote plant growth, increase stress tolerance and inhibit plant pathogens.
Aphea.Bio aims to revolutionize agriculture by leveraging the latest advances in biotechnology and a deep understanding of plant-microbe interactions to provide farmers with effective, environmentally friendly solutions to address the challenges of modern crop production.
Quover
Industry: Insurtech
Amount raised in 2023: €27.6 million
Qover is a technology-driven insurance company focused on delivering innovative insurance solutions for the digital age.
By seamlessly integrating insurance, the company aims to establish a universal safety net to protect individuals around the world.
Qover’s embedded insurance orchestration allows any business to leverage technology to seamlessly integrate insurance into their core services or as an add-on. This approach makes embedded insurance a powerful tool for businesses to strengthen their value proposition, drive success and protect their communities.
Resources
Industry: Cleantech
Amount raised in 2023: €12.5 million
RISORCE (Renewable and Innovative Solutions for Recycling and Circular Economy) offers a sustainable solution for recycling waste tire shreds into products that have value on both the Belgian and international markets. This is achieved through a non-catalytic pyrolysis process without the use of chemical additives.
Founded in 2022, RISORCE primarily utilizes the pyrolysis process to produce oil from tires, which it then sells as a feedstock to petrochemical companies in Europe.
Additionally, the plant extracts carbon black and gases suitable for industrial applications and plant operational requirements. This process significantly reduces the carbon emissions associated with used tire materials.
Pareo
Industry: Food
Amount raised in 2023: €12 million
Paleo is a company that uses precision fermentation to provide a sustainable source of animal protein with real meat flavor, helping the food industry offer beloved alternatives to meat and fish.
By cultivating heme proteins, the company eliminates the need to raise, transport and slaughter livestock, helping to conserve biodiversity, reduce land, energy and water usage, and lower humanity’s carbon footprint.
cowboy
Industry: Transportation
Amount raised in 2023: €10 million
COWBOY is a leading brand in the electric bike industry, committed to revolutionizing urban mobility with stylish, efficient and sustainable transportation solutions.
Founded with a vision to make urban living more convenient and enjoyable, COWBOY designs and manufactures innovative electric bikes that combine cutting-edge technology with sleek design aesthetics.
Cowboy bikes feature powerful electric motors, intuitive controls and integrated smart features to give riders a seamless and effortless experience when riding around city streets.
Kymru
Industry: Analytics
Amount raised in 2023: €10 million
Cumul.io is a dynamic data visualization platform that enables businesses to transform data into actionable insights.
Founded with the goal of making data analytics accessible to everyone, Cumul.io offers a user-friendly interface and a wide range of customizable visualization tools.
Whether it’s creating interactive dashboards, real-time analytics, or embedding visualizations into existing applications, Cumul.io provides seamless solutions to help businesses realize the full potential of their data. With a focus on flexibility, scalability, and ease of use, Cumul.io enables organizations to make informed decisions and effectively drive business growth.
Aikido Security
Industry: Software
Amount raised in 2023: €7 million
Aikido Security is a developer-centric software security platform that provides cutting-edge code scanning and cloud vulnerability assessment to highlight true threats, minimize false alarms, and simplify understanding of Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures (CVEs).
Aikido Security acts as a 360-degree defense tool for developers. The platform scans source code and various cloud components involved in the operations of SaaS organizations and ranks vulnerabilities by severity to ensure that critical issues are addressed first and separated from false positives.
Aikido makes it easy to secure your products so your business can focus on its core strength: coding.
Henchman
Industry: Law
Amount raised in 2023: €6.5 million
Henchman is a company that enables shared thinking among hundreds of organizations in over 35 countries, turning collective knowledge into a superpower.
The company adds an intelligent layer to its clients’ existing contract databases, enabling their legal staff to leverage the collective expertise of their teams, creating an ideal environment to help modern organizations scale legal excellence. Centralizing historical clauses and definitions combined with contextual data eliminates time-consuming tasks, allowing lawyers to focus on adding value and expertise that wows their clients.
The company’s solution has AI-powered capabilities backed by a multi-LLM approach, enabling clients to translate clauses, automatically change wording (e.g. from singular to plural and vice versa) and instantly enrich existing clauses during the drafting process.
