Brussels Startup Chift Lands $11.4M to Wire Europe's Financial Data

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-14

Imagine trying to connect a single app to 120 different financial systems across 27 countries. That's the nightmare Chift just solved — and investors noticed. Chift, a Brussels-based startup, raised €10.5 million (about $11.4 million) in Series A funding. The round was led by BlackFin Capital Partners, a European FinTech specialist managing over $4.3 billion in assets. Existing investors Entourage, Shapers, Seeder Fund, and Wallonie Entreprendre also joined. So what does Chift actually do? It's a financial connectivity layer. In plain English: it lets software vendors plug into the financial tools their users already rely on, without building dozens of custom integrations. ### Why This Problem Is So Hard "Financial data connectivity is genuinely hard to build, particularly in Europe, where data sits across dozens of local systems that were never designed to talk to each other," said Pauline Brunel, Investment Director at BlackFin. "And AI raises the stakes further: agents are only as good as the data they can access." That fragmentation is exactly why Chift's position is valuable. Founded in 2022 by Gauthier Henroz, Henry Hertoghe, and Matthieu Hertoghe, the company now connects to more than 120 financial systems through one unified API. That covers accounting, invoicing, point-of-sale, e-commerce, payments, and property management. Here's a concrete example: an invoicing platform can use Chift to route customer invoices into 40 different accounting tools — without integrating with each one individually. ### The AI Angle Nobody Saw Coming Chift isn't just about financial software anymore. It's orchestrating how AI systems and AI agents handle financial data. Through its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, AI agents can securely retrieve and push data across Chift's network, handling authentication and access control automatically. Think of it like a universal translator for financial data. Developers building AI features don't have to manage credentials system by system. "AI and e-invoicing are rebuilding the entire financial software market," said Gauthier Henroz, CEO and co-founder. "Interoperability is becoming the defining problem of European SMB finance. Its fragmentation makes that harder to build than anywhere, as systems are split across 27 countries. That is exactly why we build the infrastructure that connects it all." ### The Numbers Behind the Raise Since its €2.3 million seed round in 2024, Chift's revenue has grown more than tenfold. The team now numbers 35 people. More than 150 software companies use Chift to connect over 50,000 SMEs across more than ten European countries. Notable clients include FinTechs like Revolut, Qonto, Pennylane, and Mollie. "We are proud to back Gauthier, Henry and Matthieu in making Chift the connectivity infrastructure for business software in the AI era," added Brunel. ### What's Next for Chift The new capital will fuel expansion into every major European market and deepen its AI bet. Chift is also moving toward integrations that configure themselves rather than requiring manual setup by each customer. By 2028, the company aims to become Europe's go-to provider of financial connectivity. For anyone watching European startup incorporation trends, Chift is a case study in turning fragmentation into a moat. The harder the problem, the bigger the opportunity. And in Europe's tangled financial landscape, that opportunity is enormous.