Belgian AI pioneer Tekst raises €11.5 million from the US

Ghent-based Tekst has closed an €11.5 million Series A led by US venture firm Elephant. Pieterjan Bouten (formerly Showpad) is doubling down through Entourage. The funding sets Tekst on course to lead the global market for process intelligence — the technology that exposes the hidden data flows inside companies so AI agents can take over back-office work safely and at scale. "The technology is ready, the market is hungry for answers, and we have an approach no one else has," say co-founders Wouter Janssen and Tiebe Parmentier.

Tekst is taking aim at one of the biggest headaches in enterprise AI. Companies are pouring money into AI but struggling to make it pay off at scale. The problem, Tekst argues, isn't the technology itself — it's everything that comes before it. AI can read the data, but it doesn't grasp the context employees rely on to make decisions. Where traditional tools optimize pieces of a process, Tekst goes after the whole thing — the messy, end-to-end work that runs the back office: quotes, orders, claims, customer service.

"The processes that actually run a business aren't written down anywhere. They live in emails, in PDFs, in people's heads. Our process intelligence technology surfaces all of it. Without that, an AI agent is just an expensive assistant or a glorified chatbot. The companies that crack this open get to use AI on a completely different level — and finally see real returns on what they've put in." — Wouter Janssen, CEO and co-founder of Tekst

Invisible footprints

Rather than hiring consultants to spend months interviewing and analyzing, Tekst reconstructs processes automatically from the digital trail employees leave behind every day — emails, documents, clicks. The system reveals which messages trigger which actions.

"Instead of sending in an army of consultants to run interviews and write reports, we go straight to the source — the system itself — and watch how work actually flows. Which emails trigger which actions? Which document drives which decision? Where do the exceptions hide? From there we build a live process model — a blueprint of how information really moves through the company. Only then do we bring in AI agents that genuinely understand the process: who decides what, when a human needs to step in, which exceptions are allowed. Nobody else in the market starts from that foundation." — Tiebe Parmentier, CTO and co-founder of Tekst

The ideal launchpad

The new funding lets Tekst go all-in on quote-to-cash, procure-to-pay and other critical business processes. For most enterprises, these critical processes are often the least automated. At a typical Tekst customer, dozens or even hundreds of employees handle quotes and orders by hand: long email threads, order details buried in PDFs, contract clauses reviewed line by line.

That's where Tekst comes in. The platform connects directly to systems companies already use — SAP, Salesforce, Microsoft — and lifts the repetitive work off the table without ripping anything out. Customers include Daikin Europe N.V., Colruyt Group, Securex, and Becton Dickinson.

"Nobody joins logistics or finance or customer ops to copy-paste data all day. We get rid of that work so people can focus on what actually matters — exceptions, customer experience, better decisions. Quote-to-cash is the perfect place to start: it's complex, it's mission-critical, and it's still way too manual." — Wouter Janssen, CEO and co-founder of Tekst

Doubling the team

The investment will fuel product development and international expansion. Tekst has 35 employees today and plans to double headcount by year-end, with hiring focused on engineering and go-to-market.

"The AI market is moving at breakneck speed, but Tekst has unique technology that maps and automates the most complex business processes in record time. What consulting firms typically deliver in months — with large teams and hefty costs — Tekst delivers in just a few weeks." — Pieterjan Bouten, General Partner at Entourage

A category leader in the making

Elephant sees Tekst as a potential market leader in process intelligence.

"Many mid-market and enterprise companies want to deploy AI agents — but they're missing the process intelligence layer needed to do it reliably. Tekst understands that gap and has developed an AI-powered product to help close it. Their technology shows how processes actually flow within an organization, and we believe that's the foundation AI agents need to operate properly in the back office." — Matt Tanenblatt, Partner at Elephant

^{About Tekst}

^{Tekst was founded in Ghent in 2022 by Wouter Janssen (CEO) and Tiebe Parmentier (CTO). The company's process intelligence platform automatically maps the invisible business processes that run modern enterprises, then deploys AI agents to take that work over. Customers include Daikin Europe N.V., Colruyt Group, Securex and Becton Dickinson. Entourage, the venture firm of ex-Showpad founder Pieterjan Bouten, has previously invested more than €2M in the company across earlier rounds.}

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