Belgian Startup Backbone brings AI to Food Compliance

Backbone, an AI platform built for the realities of food & beverage quality, led by Siska Lannoo, Louis Opsomer, and the team, has announced its launch. Backbone closed a seed round several months ago, with backing from the 100IN fund of serial entrepreneurs Gilles Mattelin and Jorn Vanysacker, at a pre-product stage.

A recipe change at a food manufacturer triggers a cascade of quality checks, as stricter food safety regulations now require compliance across the entire organisation. Despite this, oversight largely remains manual.

Supplier changes, product launches, and raw material deliveries still involve manually cross-referencing data across spreadsheets, documents, and emails. Without real-time visibility, issues often go unnoticed until production or even after products reach shelves.

Backbone’s founders estimate poor quality costs the sector up to 15% of revenue, driven not by single failures but by accumulated small deviations caught too late, an issue highlighted by recent baby food incidents.

Backbone shifts quality management from certificate-driven checks to real-time oversight by centralising and analysing existing data across organisations, from supplier documents and lab results to internal processes. Much of this information already exists but remains fragmented or siloed.

Traditional approaches rely on static certificates as benchmarks, offering only point-in-time validation. In contrast, continuous monitoring surfaces risks as they emerge, moving beyond post-audit compliance. Reduced administrative burden also enables quality teams to focus on higher-impact decisions.

Lannoo and Opsomer previously worked together at Showpad, contributing to its international growth, before joining Henchman’s management team. That experience highlighted how fragmented and error-prone compliance workflows remain, as well as the gap between current practices and what modern AI tools can deliver, particularly in food manufacturing.

Backbone raised a seed round at a pre-product stage, backed by the 100IN fund. The platform is now live across multiple production sites, with growing interest from domestic and international markets. Early customers include Zoutman, Greenway, Azingro, and Euromeat.

The funding will support commercial expansion and further product development, alongside partnerships with global standards bodies and technology companies, including integrations with Microsoft’s Copilot.

The challenge is global, with strong demand reinforcing the opportunity. The food industry is shifting toward predictive systems that surface risks early, moving beyond reactive processes.

Speed in AI is a competitive edge, but lasting impact depends on deep domain expertise, an essential combination for scalable solutions.