Belgium startup ecosystem
Belgium's central position in Europe and role as EU capital make Brussels a natural hub for govtech, regulatory technology, and policy-adjacent startups. Ghent and Leuven add strong university-linked innovation in biotech and AI. The multilingual talent pool and access to EU institutions offer unique advantages for startups navigating cross-border markets. The directory currently lists 74 organisations across 10 cities.
Showing 61–74 of 74 Belgium
Cities in Belgium
Types in Belgium
Belgium results
-
Showpad
Showpad is a revenue effectiveness and sales enablement platform combining AI-powered content management, readiness training, buyer engagement tools and field analytics in a single system. Founded in 2011 in Ghent by Pieterjan Bouten, Louis Jonckheere and Peter Minne, it raised $180 M over seven rounds and grew to over 2,000 enterprise customers across 50 countries. In October 2025 Vector Capital completed its acquisition of Showpad and merged it with Bigtincan to create a unified AI-native revenue effectiveness platform, with the combined entity retaining the Showpad brand. The Ghent base and global team of 500+ remain active, with a 2026 Spring Release delivered in April 2026.
-
Siegfried Jaeken
Siegfried Jaeken is Managing Director for Data & AI at Accenture, one of the world's leading professional services and consulting firms with annual revenues exceeding $60 billion. In this senior leadership role he oversees Accenture's data strategy and artificial intelligence practice for European markets, guiding enterprise clients through AI-driven business transformations at scale.
-
Silverfin
Silverfin is a cloud accounting software company based in Ghent, Belgium, founded in 2013 by Joris Van Der Gucht and Tim Vandecasteele. Its connected accounting platform standardises and centralises financial data so accountants can automate compliance and reporting work and deliver advisory services more efficiently. The company operated across multiple countries with a customer base that included large accounting firms. In September 2023 the Norwegian software group Visma acquired Silverfin in a deal reported at around €300 million, one of the larger Belgian tech transactions.
-
Smashing Media
The team behind Smashing Magazine and the SmashingConf conference series for designers and front-end engineers. SmashingConf events cover design systems, AI prototyping, product design and complex user interfaces through hands-on workshops and conference sessions across European cities including Antwerp.
-
SmashingConf Antwerp 2026 (October 2026)
A long-running design and front-end engineering conference at the Bourla theatre in Antwerp for designers and UI engineers. It covers design systems, AI prototyping, product design and complex user interfaces across hands-on workshops plus conference sessions, drawing around 500 to 600 attendees and roughly a dozen speakers.
-
Sofina
Sofina is a Brussels-based investment holding company listed on Euronext Brussels that invests in growth-stage technology companies, consumer brands, and education platforms worldwide. With a heritage dating back to 1898, Sofina manages over $10 billion in assets and has backed major European and global companies including ByteDance, Delivery Hero, and Flixbus. The firm focuses on long-term holdings and typically invests from Series B through pre-IPO, bringing patient capital and a multi-generational investment perspective.
-
Sortlist
Sortlist is a Belgian marketplace that connects companies with marketing, creative and digital agencies, helping businesses discover, evaluate and hire service providers. Founded in 2014 and registered in Wavre, it operates across multiple European markets. It raised an early round in 2019 with investors including Sambrinvest, and an €11 million round in 2021 backed by SRIW and The Club Deal. In 2024 the company reported reaching operational profitability, and in 2025 it named co-founder Nicolas Finet CEO alongside a new innovation lab.
-
Steven Luys
Representative of Exail Robotics Belgium working on autonomous and unmanned maritime systems. He is a confirmed speaker at the DroneHorizon summit during Port of the Future Week 2026 in Antwerp, addressing autonomous robotics for ports and critical infrastructure.
-
Swave Photonics
Swave Photonics has developed the world's first true holographic display chip — the HXR spatial light modulator with sub-300 nm pixels — enabling AR smart glasses, heads-up displays and 3D video walls without waveguides or varifocal lenses. Spun out of imec in Leuven in 2022 by Theo Marescaux and Dmitri Choutov, the company closed a €27 M Series A in January 2025 co-led by imec.xpand and SFPIM Relaunch, followed by a €6 M Samsung Ventures-backed follow-on in June 2025, bringing total funding to over €43 M. The chip leverages CMOS manufacturing for mass-market cost structures, targeting OEMs in AR wearables and automotive HUDs.
-
Teamleader
Teamleader is a Ghent-based SaaS company that provides cloud software for small and medium-sized businesses, combining CRM, project management, quotation and invoicing tools in a single platform. Founded in 2012 by Jeroen De Wit, Mathias De Loore and Willem Delbare, it expanded into multiple products including Teamleader Focus for small teams and Teamleader Orbit for agencies. After raising rounds backed by Fortino Capital and Keen Venture Partners, the company was acquired by the Norwegian software group Visma in June 2022 and continues to operate under its own name.
-
TechWolf
TechWolf is a Ghent-founded enterprise AI company building the skills inference layer that large organizations need to move from role-based to skills-based operating models. Instead of asking employees and managers to maintain a skills taxonomy by hand (which never works at scale), TechWolf ingests signals from the systems where work actually happens — HRIS, ATS, learning platforms, project-management tools, internal wikis — and uses NLP models to derive a live, probabilistic skills graph per employee. Large enterprises plug that graph into internal mobility, workforce planning, strategic sourcing, and generative-AI copilots to answer questions like 'who inside the company can staff this project?' or 'how exposed is this business unit to automation?'. The company has raised growth capital from Felix Capital and Stride.VC and counts several Fortune 500 HR and technology buyers among its clients, and has partnered with SAP SuccessFactors, ServiceNow, and Workday as an embeddable skills engine — a strategically useful position in a category now being chased by the biggest HCM vendors in the world.
-
Vitaly Friedman
Co-founder and creative lead of Smashing Magazine, the long-running publication and conference brand for web designers and front-end developers. He curates and hosts the SmashingConf series, including the Antwerp edition, focusing on UX, design systems and complex interface design.
-
Wizata
Wizata is a Belgian industrial-AI company offering a platform for real-time insights and closed-loop automation across manufacturing processes in industries such as steel, cement, mining, food and beverage, and chemicals. It reports connecting more than 100 plants and 1,000+ assets globally, with clients citing improvements in quality, energy consumption, equipment efficiency and yield.
-
Yiying Lu
Award-winning designer and artist behind Happy Creative Land, known for globally recognised visual work, and a confirmed speaker at SmashingConf Antwerp 2026. She speaks on creativity, visual design and brand-led product design.
