Traditionally, SME advisory services, such as consulting, compliance, and business support, are labour-intensive, costly, and difficult to scale efficiently. Many SMEs struggle to access high-quality, affordable advisory services tailored to their needs, limiting their growth and operational effectiveness. Ravical aims to leverage AI-first, agentic products to transform these services by automating and enhancing the advisory process with advanced artificial intelligence.
Ravical has secured €7.3 million in pre-seed funding to bring domain-trained AI agents to professional services firms in tax, legal, accounting, and insurance. European venture capital firm Lakestar led the round, backing the Ghent-based startup. Serial entrepreneur Joris Van Der Gucht co-founded the startup, which built and sold accounting-automation pioneer Silverfin for €320 million in 2023.
Ravical has already undertaken 10 pilot projects with professional services firms of various sizes and across multiple industries. The funding round will enable Ravical to develop its solution further, add to its team, and fuel its international expansion.
Transforming how SME advisory services are delivered and scaled
Ravical’s founding team combines proven success in professional service automation with deep AI expertise. The company’s co-founder and CEO, Joris Van Der Gucht, previously co-founded cloud-based accountancy automation leader Silverfin, sold in 2023 for €320m. Ravical co-founders, alongside Van Der Gucht, include proven AI builder and founder Ken Bastiaensen and Benjamin Vandermarliere, an AI product leader with a PhD in physics & AI research.
Ravical was created to transform how SME advisory services are delivered and scaled. The company’s mission is to leverage AI-first, agentic products to make expert advisory services, such as accounting, tax, insurance, HR, and legal support, more accessible, efficient, and scalable for professional firms and their clients. Ravical aims to empower European customers to deliver reliable and proactive advice at scale by combining cutting-edge AI technologies with a focus on simplicity and innovation.
Ravical addresses the market problem of inefficient, expensive, and hard-to-scale advisory services for SMEs. Traditional advisory services are often labour-intensive and costly, limiting access and scalability. Ravical’s founders saw an opportunity to use advanced AI to automate and enhance these services, making them more affordable, efficient, and widely available.
Ravical answers several strategic challenges professional services face today, particularly the war for talent. Professional services firms increasingly struggle to find and retain top talent, leading to staff shortages, strained client relationships, and knowledge erosion as AI models become more sophisticated. Ravical’s strategic approach is designed to address these challenges head-on, providing a solution that is both innovative and practical.
Ravical’s AI agents are designed to augment human advisors, not replace them. Automating routine tasks frees experts to focus on high-value, strategic work. This balanced approach ensures that the platform enhances efficiency and maintains the quality and personal touch that human advisors bring to the table, instilling confidence in the audience.
At the same time, Ravical enables the “productisation” that many professional-services firms have chased for a decade, turning their repeatable expertise into scalable, packaged services.
Joris Van Der Gucht continued: “Productisation has proven a hard nut to crack for many professional services firms. Our solution can deliver this almost overnight by automating expert professional services. It unlocks the ability to focus the firm’s employees on higher value and strategic support, while offering new possibilities to grow revenue.”
Domain-trained AI agents built for accounting, tax, legal, HR and insurance firms
Ravical delivers AI agents —”virtual employees” that combine domain-specific expertise, firm know-how, and client context—to automate and scale up to 80% of professional services work. This allows human experts to concentrate on the strategic 20 per cent that drives profit and deepens client relationships.
These agents are built on a multi-layered agentic architecture that orchestrates specialised AI agents for tasks such as contextual analysis, response generation, and quality assurance, ensuring tailored, accurate, and compliant outputs.
Joris Van Der Gucht, CEO and founder of Ravical, said: “We don’t believe AI will replace expert firms—but we do think that 80 per cent of the work in these firms lends itself to AI automation. We offer these firms agents who deliver high-quality digital services that respect their unique knowledge and culture.”
“Agentic AI is moving from buzzword to board-level priority,” said Enrico Mellis, Partner at Lakestar. “Ravical’s team has already proven they can automate professional workflows at scale; we’re excited to support them as they bring that playbook to a broader services market.”
Ravical is also committed to security and compliance, having completed an ISO 27001 audit with no non-conformities. It implements GDPR-compliant data handling practices, critical for handling sensitive client information in professional services.
With these foundations, Ravical is poised to accelerate the digital transformation of professional services across Europe, enabling firms to scale expertise, improve client engagement, and unlock new revenue streams through AI-driven innovation.
