Gilles Baekelandt

Gilles Baekelandt is the co-founder and chief executive of Buildhive, which he co-founded in May 2025. He is based in Belgium.

Before that he worked at Bekaert in corporate strategy, joining in September 2022 as a young graduate analyst and continuing as a corporate strategy analyst from July 2024 until May 2025. In February 2022 he won the BCG Strategy Cup, organised by Boston Consulting Group. He spent July 2021 as a maintenance engineer at Cargill, worked on the promoteam of PKarus Gent between September 2019 and May 2021, and was a lifeguard on the Belgian coast with IKWV, the Intercommunale Kustreddingsdienst West-Vlaanderen, during the summers from 2016 to 2021.

Baekelandt studied electromechanical engineering at Ghent University, taking a bachelor's degree between 2017 and 2020, and completed a Master of Science in mechanical engineering there in June 2022. During that period he spent the autumn of 2021 at Polytechnique Montréal, also in mechanical engineering, and followed German and French language courses at Ghent University.