Backbone raises €4M for food quality AI

Food industry software startup Backbone has raised €4 million in pre-seed funding. The round, led by Pitchdrive, will fuel further development of its AI-powered quality and compliance platform and support commercial growth.

Founded in 2025 by Louis Opsomer, Siska Lannoo, and Julien Steel, Backbone targets a sector where quality operations often rely on spreadsheets and email. The company's software aims to centralize fragmented quality data, which is typically scattered across purchasing, R&D, laboratory, and quality teams.

The Fragmented Data Problem

Quality information in food companies is distributed across different departments and systems. Supplier details sit with purchasing, recipes with R&D, and test results with laboratories. This siloed structure means a simple change, like introducing a new supplier, can trigger manual reviews and updates across multiple teams.

Backbone consolidates this data into a single platform. It covers supplier documentation, lab results, and regulatory requirements. The software structures the information and checks it against major food safety standards like IFS, BRCGS, and FSSC 22000. This allows teams to identify compliance gaps, search quality data, and prioritize actions.

Automating with AI Agents

Building on its centralized data layer, Backbone is developing AI agents to automate parts of the quality management process. These agents are designed to track supplier certificates, check lab results and incoming documents against current specifications, and record incidents. A central dashboard brings this information together, giving quality teams and management an overview of outstanding issues and priorities.

Co-founder Louis Opsomer explained the core challenge. "A food company today has all the data it needs to make better quality decisions, but the different data points aren't talking to each other," he said. "We build an intelligence layer that connects those dots, understands the context and puts it to work."

Funding and Expansion Plans

The pre-seed round was led by Pitchdrive. It included participation from PROfounders Capital, Passion Capital, existing investor 100IN, and a group of Belgian food industry investors, including Agristo and Darta.

The new capital will be used to further develop Backbone's product, expand marketing activities, and pursue partnerships with international certification bodies and ERP implementation partners. The startup has already expanded beyond its Belgian base into the UK and the Netherlands.

Backbone's customers span the food supply chain. They include raw material and ingredient suppliers, producers, packaging companies, and distributors. The company is tackling an industry facing increasing regulatory requirements, customer expectations, and evolving certification standards.