Backbone Raises €4 Million to Replace Spreadsheet-Driven Food Quality Management with AI Agents

Food industry software company Backbone has raised €4 million in pre-seed funding to develop its AI-powered quality and compliance platform and expand commercially, according to Tech.eu.

The round was led by Pitchdrive, with participation from PROfounders Capital, Passion Capital, existing investor 100IN and a group of Belgian food industry investors including potato processor Agristo and Darta.

A data problem hiding in plain sight

Backbone was founded in 2025 by Louis Opsomer, Siska Lannoo and Julien Steel. The company is targeting a function that, in many food businesses, still relies on spreadsheets, shared drives and email despite rising regulatory demands, more exacting customer specifications and frequently updated certification standards.

The core issue is fragmentation. Supplier documentation typically sits with procurement, recipes with R&D, test results with the laboratory and regulatory and customer requirements with the quality team. A single change, such as approving a new supplier or adjusting a formulation, can trigger manual reviews across several departments.

How the platform works

Backbone consolidates this information into one system covering supplier documents, laboratory results and regulatory requirements. The software structures the data and checks it against major food safety and quality schemes, including IFS, BRCGS and FSSC 22000, so that teams can identify gaps, search quality records and prioritise corrective actions.

On top of this data layer, the company is building AI agents to automate routine tasks. These include:

• Tracking supplier certificates and flagging upcoming expiries.
• Checking laboratory results and incoming documents against current specifications.
• Recording and logging incidents.

Outputs feed a central dashboard designed to give quality managers and senior leadership a single view of open issues and priorities. Co-founder Louis Opsomer said food companies already hold the data needed for better quality decisions, but the data points are not connected, and Backbone aims to provide the intelligence layer that links them.

Customers and expansion

Backbone has expanded from Belgium into the UK and the Netherlands. Its customer base spans the food supply chain, from raw material and ingredient suppliers to manufacturers, packaging companies and distributors.

The new funding will support product development, marketing and partnerships with international certification bodies and ERP implementation partners, which could become important distribution channels.

Industry context

Quality and food safety teams have been among the slower functions to benefit from digital tools, partly because their work spans so many internal systems and external parties. Audit preparation, supplier approval and specification management remain labour-intensive, and staff shortages in technical roles have increased the pressure.

AI agents that read documents and compare them with specifications could remove much of that administrative load. However, adoption will depend on several factors:

• Traceable outputs. Auditors and certification bodies will expect clear evidence of how automated checks reach their conclusions.
• Human oversight. Food safety decisions carry legal accountability, so agents are likely to support rather than replace qualified staff.
• Integration. Value increases significantly when the platform connects with ERP, laboratory information and supplier management systems already in place.

Outlook

Backbone joins a growing group of startups applying AI to compliance-heavy food industry workflows. Its focus on recognised certification schemes and partnerships with certifiers and ERP integrators gives it a credible route to market, provided it can demonstrate that automation reduces workload without compromising audit readiness.