Pitchdrive Leads Backbone Round of €4M to Build the Compliance OS for Food & Feed

One compliance miss can destroy a brand overnight. Yet 80% of food producers still run quality on spreadsheets and institutional memory.

Food and feed is one of the world's largest and most regulated industries, and quality and compliance are still managed through spreadsheets, emails and disconnected systems. Backbone brings those workflows into a single AI-native platform.

Today, Pitchdrive is leading Backbone's €4M pre-seed round, alongside PROfounders, Passion Capital and 100IN, together with well-known investors from the food sector.

AI for Food Quality

Every supplier change, ingredient update or product launch requires teams to manually verify specifications, certifications and regulatory requirements across countless documents. Without continuous oversight, critical signals surface too late, and small failures escalate into recalls, rework and lost retailer contracts.

Backbone brings these workflows into a single AI-native platform that continuously analyzes supplier documentation, lab results, internal procedures and regulatory standards. Instead of identifying issues after the fact, it helps manufacturers detect risks before they impact production. It's a vertical where AI will fundamentally reshape how work gets done and Backbone is building for exactly that shift.

Backbone has already expanded beyond Belgium into the UK and the Netherlands. Its customers span the food supply chain, from raw material and ingredient suppliers to producers, packaging companies and distributors.

The initial market includes more than 120,000 GFSI-certified food and feed production sites across Europe and North America, an estimated €3B software opportunity. The opportunity extends further: producers spend an estimated €18 to €22 billion a year on consultants, auditors and certification bodies to interpret regulations, review suppliers and prepare audits. As AI takes on more of that work, Backbone can capture a meaningful share of that spend.

Founders who have built before, together

Louis Opsomer (CEO) scaled revenue operations at Showpad before leading operations and fundraising at Henchman through its exit to LexisNexis. Siska Lannoo (CCO) built partner-led growth at both Showpad and Henchman. Julien Steel (CPO) was a product leader at Rydoo before becoming CPO at Henchman, where he scaled enterprise products from MVP to maturity.

We've known Louis, Siska and Julien for years through Henchman and Rydoo, and spent several months working alongside the team as the idea for Backbone took shape. By launch, our conviction in both the founders and the opportunity was already firmly built.

"Backbone isn't just fixing quality management in F&B - they are setting a completely new standard for the industry by using the power of AI. The speed, execution, and deep domain obsession of this team are unlike anything we've seen. They're building the modern nervous system for global manufacturing, and leading this round was an absolute conviction call for us."
Boris Bogaert, Co-founder & GP of Pitchdrive

We're proud to partner with Louis, Siska and Julien, and look forward to continuing to support them on the journey ahead.