The Unicorn Club
Belgium has produced seven tech unicorns, a remarkable density for a country of 11 million. Collibra, Odoo, Deliverect, and Aikido Security each represent a fundamentally different approach to building product at scale. Together, they sketch the range of what is possible from a Belgian base.
Collibra: The Enterprise Data Standard
Founded in Brussels in 2008 by Felix Van de Maele, Pieter De Leenheer, and Stijn Christiaens, Collibra reached a $5.25 billion valuation after its Series G led by Sequoia and Sofina. The company serves over 1,000 enterprise customers and continues to grow its product organization globally. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are reportedly advising on an IPO targeted for 2027-2028.
For Belgian PMs, Collibra is significant not just for its scale but for what it proved: that a global enterprise product organization can be built and run from Belgium. Their recent moves into AI governance, cataloging ML models and enforcing responsible AI policies, put them at the intersection of two of the hottest topics in product right now. Dmytro Protsyk shared the realities of scale-up PM at Collibra at PRDCTDay: /articles/prdctday-2023-scaleup-pm-challenges.
Odoo: The Anti-Playbook
Odoo is the outlier that makes every product management framework nervous. Founded by Fabien Pinckaers (now Europe's youngest tech billionaire) in Ramillies, Wallonia, the open-source ERP company hit a EUR 5 billion valuation in November 2024 after raising EUR 500M from CapitalG, Sequoia, BlackRock, and Mubadala. It expects EUR 650M in billing revenue for 2025, growing 42% year-over-year, and employs over 8,000 people with plans to reach 10,000 in 2026.
Here is what makes Odoo a fascinating case study: Pinckaers runs the company with no external leadership hires, no organization-level KPIs, and a developer-driven culture that deliberately minimizes formal product management roles. It is the anti-playbook, and it is working at a scale that demands attention. Whether you agree with the approach or not, any serious conversation about product in Belgium has to reckon with Odoo.
Deliverect: Platform at Speed
Deliverect built an order management platform for restaurants that has processed over 1 billion orders across 30+ markets. With a $1.4 billion valuation from its Series D, it represents the kind of high-throughput, integration-heavy product work that requires PMs who think in systems, not screens.
Aikido Security: Zero to Unicorn in Three Years
The newest member of Belgium's unicorn club is Aikido Security, which reached a $1 billion valuation in January 2026 after a $60M Series B led by DST Global. Founded in 2022 in Ghent by Willem Delbare (CTO & CEO), Roeland Delrue (COO & CRO), and Felix Garriau (CMO), Aikido became the fastest European cybersecurity company to reach unicorn status. Their application security platform, which identifies and automatically remediates vulnerabilities in software (with a focus on AI-generated code), is used by over 100,000 teams including SoundCloud, Niantic, and Revolut. It is the purest product-led growth story to come out of Belgium. Co-founder Roeland Delrue shared Aikido's PLG playbook at a TPC Gathering: read the full talk at /articles/gathering-8-product-led-growth-aikido.
