Holmes launches with €1.1M pre-seed for autonomous software testing

Ghent-based Holmes, a technology company focused on reinventing software
quality assurance for the AI era, has launched with €1.1 million in pre-seed
funding.

The round was led by Syndicate One, with participation from Aikido
founders Roeland Delrue and Willem Delbare, Showpad co-founder Louis
Jonckheere, and serial entrepreneur Thomas Van Overbeke. Investment funds
NewSchool.vc, RDY Capital, and 100IN also joined the round. The investor base
reflects the broader Ghent technology ecosystem behind companies such as Aikido
and Henchman.

Founded by Robin Praet, Robbrecht Delrue, and Sofie Buyse, Holmes is
building an autonomous quality assurance (QA) platform designed for software
teams operating at AI development speed. As AI coding tools accelerate software
production, quality assurance has increasingly become a bottleneck, with
engineering and product teams still relying heavily on manually written and
maintained tests to ensure products function correctly.

Rather than depending on predefined scripts and manual test maintenance,
Holmes learns how a product works and how users interact with it. Based on
those workflows, the platform continuously generates and updates tests that
verify critical user journeys as the product evolves.

At Henchman, I experienced firsthand how QA often becomes work that
everyone knows is essential, but nobody truly owns. Testing frequently ends up
on the plate of developers and product managers alongside their existing
responsibilities. Holmes was built to automate that process and allow teams to
continue shipping products with greater confidence,

said Sofie Buyse, Product Manager at Holmes.

Robbrecht Delrue, co-founder of Holmes, noted that most software
companies do not invest heavily in QA teams early on. However, as products and
development teams scale, manual testing increasingly becomes a constraint on
release speed and growth, a challenge Holmes aims to address.

In addition to its founding team, Holmes works with a group of
experienced technology leaders advising the company on product development,
including Dieter Wachters, Haroen Vermylen, Jaap Vergote, and Ivo Minjauw.

The funding will be used to further develop the Holmes platform, expand
the product and engineering teams, and support the company’s rollout beyond its
current group of design partners.