Last Updated: 7 May 2026
Tekst, a startup founded in Ghent in 2022, has closed an €11.5 million Series A funding round. The company builds software that maps the hidden, often undocumented processes inside large organizations so that AI agents can take over back-office work reliably. Co-founders Wouter Janssen and Tiebe Parmentier started the company on a specific premise: that the real problem with enterprise AI is not the technology itself, but the business context the technology cannot see.
Most companies investing in AI are not getting the returns they expected. A 2026 survey found that 79% of organizations face challenges adopting AI, a significant rise from the year before. A separate Deloitte study found that only 20% of enterprises are already growing revenue through AI, even though 74% say they hope to do so. Tekst's core argument is that AI systems can read data just fine. What they cannot do is understand the informal rules, judgment calls, and messy workflows that experienced employees carry around in their heads.
The Series A was led by US venture firm Elephant. Entourage, the fund run by Pieterjan Bouten, who previously co-founded Belgian SaaS company Showpad, also participated. Entourage had put in more than €2 million across earlier rounds.
Standard automation tools tend to handle one step at a time: approving a document, routing an email, updating a field in a database. Tekst approaches the problem differently. Its platform studies the digital trail that employees already leave behind every day — emails, PDFs, mouse clicks, system entries — and uses that data to build a live map of how work actually flows through the organization. Only after building that map does the platform deploy AI agents to handle the tasks.
The processes that run most companies are never fully written down. They exist in email threads, in department habits, in the quiet knowledge of long-tenured employees. When AI agents are dropped into environments like these without that context, they tend to fail or produce unreliable results. That is the problem Tekst is trying to solve.
"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."
Matt Tanenblatt, Partner at Elephant
The new capital will go toward product development, international expansion, and hiring. Tekst currently has 35 employees and plans to double its headcount before the end of the year, with most new roles in engineering and go-to-market.
The company is focusing its commercial efforts on two categories of business workflow: quote-to-cash and procure-to-pay. Quote-to-cash covers everything from sending a customer a price offer to receiving final payment. Procure-to-pay covers purchasing from suppliers. Both are known for being repetitive, document-heavy, and still handled manually at many large organizations. At typical Tekst customers, dozens or even hundreds of staff process orders by hand, working through email threads and checking contract terms line by line.
"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
The company integrates directly with the software systems its customers already use, including SAP, Salesforce, and Microsoft products. There is no need to replace existing infrastructure. Customers include Daikin Europe N.V., Colruyt Group, Securex, and Becton Dickinson.
The starting point is what makes Tekst's approach distinct. Most process automation tools require someone to first sit down and document how a process works. Tekst skips that step. It derives the process map from actual system activity, which means the resulting model reflects what really happens, not what a manager thinks happens or what a consultant writes up after a series of interviews.
"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
Elephant describes itself as a venture capital firm focused on fast-growing, capital-efficient technology companies. The firm has identified process intelligence as a layer it believes enterprise AI currently lacks, and sees Tekst as a potential leader in that space.
Entourage has been involved with Tekst from early on. Bouten's background scaling a Belgian B2B software company through to international growth gives Entourage a hands-on perspective that extends beyond capital alone.
The €11.5 million Series A builds on Entourage's earlier investment of more than €2 million, though the full amount raised by Tekst to date has not been disclosed. The founders have said publicly that attracting a US investor reflects the fact that the technology Tekst has developed does not yet exist at this level in Silicon Valley.
