Custodea secures €350K to give European SMEs greater control over their data

Custodea, a European AI data platform designed to help SMEs centralise and manage their business data, has raised €350,000 in seed funding from investors in Custodea’s network.

Custodea is addressing the fragmentation of business data across accounting, customer management, HR and other software systems. SMEs often rely on manual exports, spreadsheets and input from different teams to access up-to-date information, making it difficult to maintain a consolidated view of their operations.

The company brings together information from dozens of business systems, including Exact Online, HubSpot and Personio, in a dedicated private data environment. Data is continuously synchronised, allowing companies to access current information without manual exports or complex migrations.

Businesses can connect this data to tools including Excel, Power BI, Looker, Tableau and dbt, or use it as a foundation for AI models and agents. The platform also includes an AI assistant that can answer questions and analyse a company’s own business data, including revenue trends and outstanding invoices.

According to Gregory Aerts, co-founder of Custodea, as AI adoption grows, businesses increasingly need greater control over their data and the ability to manage and use it effectively.

With Custodea, I want to help close the technology gap between large corporations – with large budgets and dedicated data teams – and SMEs. Data is power, and with Custodea, we are putting that power into the hands of SMEs: data they fully own, stored and managed within the EU and ready to power AI. We are launching SMEs into the AI era,

said Aerts.

The platform is designed to give businesses control over how their information is stored and accessed. Custodea says all connections are read-only by default, while customers determine who can access their data and can revoke access at any time.

Custodea’s infrastructure is located entirely within the European Union. The company is positioning this EU-based infrastructure as an alternative for SMEs seeking to retain control over their business data while continuing to use their existing software. European providers currently account for a relatively small share of EU cloud usage, with many businesses relying on software whose underlying infrastructure is operated by US-based cloud companies.

The funding will support Custodea’s platform launch and its plans to scale the service across European markets.