Sofie Buyse

TLDR

Sofie Buyse is a Belgian product builder, co-founder of Holmes and previously the first hire and product manager at Henchman, the legal AI startup acquired by LexisNexis for EUR 136.1M in 2024.

Overview

Buyse joined Henchman as its first employee, working alongside founders Gilles Mattelin, Jorn Vanysacker, and Wouter Van Respaille as the company grew its AI contract-drafting product into more than 170 law firms. Under her tenure, Henchman won a Best UI/UX Design Award. LexisNexis acquired Henchman in July 2024 for EUR 136.1M.

After the Henchman exit, Buyse co-founded Holmes in 2026 with Robin Praet and Robbrecht Delrue. Holmes is an autonomous QA platform for AI-era engineering teams, and launched in May 2026 with a EUR 1.1M pre-Seed round led by Syndicate One.

Buyse is based in Ghent.

Sources

• https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/05/belgiums-holmes-launches-with-e1-1-million-pre-seed-to-catch-software-bugs-before-they-reach-users/
• https://tech.eu/2026/05/12/holmes-launches-with-eur11m-pre-seed-for-autonomous-software-testing/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofie-buyse-2a2aa57b/
• https://blog.henchman.io/en/author/sofie-buyse