Highsail launches with Entourage backing to bring AI to field operations

Ghent-based Highsail, a startup that utilises AI for field operations, has officially launched with pre-seed funding from Entourage, a venture Studio and early-stage VC that invests in the early-stage B2B and SaaS sectors.

“Highsail is the kind of practical AI we love to back: embedded, and ROI-driven,” says Pieterjan Bouten, founder of Entourage. “They’re not chasing AI hype – they are solving a massive pain point for an industry that has been underserved, with technology that actually works in the real world.”

The startup will use the funds to accelerate product development and global expansion from Highsail’s base in Ghent, Belgium.

Highsail will utilise the capital to expand its team quickly, specifically in engineering, product management, and the marketing department.

About Highsail

Co-founded by Jonas Maeyens (former founder at Cronos Group) and Lance De Waele (former founding engineer at Tekst), Highsail is on a mission to bring AI-powered efficiency to service professionals in the field. While AI is reshaping enterprises and boosting office productivity, Highsail now brings that same power to the real economy.

"We believe frictionless data capture is the foundation for transforming field service efficiency," said Jonas Maeyens, co-founder and CEO. "Our customers see immediate ROI - better data quality translates into faster job completion, reducing administrative overhead by over 70% and directly improving their margins and customer satisfaction.”

Highsail eliminates the loss of information and context between between field and office. Every update, measurement, and observation is instantly available across the organization and every piece of information is at your fingertips in seconds: it’s like carrying the backoffice in your pocket.

Customers including Climagroup, Elneo, and Firma Beel already see measurable impact across industrial maintenance, field service, and inspections, with global field service companies now onboarding.

Backed by the funding, the team will continue product development from its base in Ghent while expanding rapidly, with open roles across engineering, product management, and marketing.

What does Highsail solve?

Highsail is building for the heartbeat of the economy - the people that keep buildings running, machines working, and working environments safe.

Field operations worldwide face a perfect storm: the market is rising (12-15% YoY) and skilled workforce has never been harder to find. Yet teams lose hours every day rewriting job notes, chasing missing information and manually updating clunky tools and checklists that were supposed to make their lives easier.

While many white collar workers are reaping the benefits from AI and increased automation, field service professionals are left behind - stuck with manual paperwork, cumbersome checklists, siloed systems, and clunky tools.

The burden keeps growing and there is no way to hire your way out of this.

Building on this urgency, Highsail has a bold vision: to become the intelligence layer for field operations**.** The next wave of AI won’t live in dashboards or chatbots. It won’t be another tool to manage, but will be built into the way people work, eliminating friction from the frontline to the backoffice.