Annual Report 2025

2025 brought more of what has become familiar: economic pressure, geopolitical uncertainty, and an AI landscape moving faster than many can keep up with. Geert Rottier is matter of-fact about it: “Holding our position in a year like this, and strengthening it, is something to be proud of.”

Earned, Not Given

The most recent Belgian Whitelane results, published in February 2026, put some hard numbers behind that claim. For the fourth consecutive year, Cegeka took the undisputed number one spot in Security Services with an 87% customer satisfaction score, while landing shared second place in both Cloud & Infrastructure and Network & Connectivity, as well as a top-five finish in Workplace Services.

“What I value most about Whitelane,” Rottier says, “is that it is earned, not given. Those scores are built on in-depth client feedback, and that carries real weight with the CxOs we talk to every day.” It’s credibility that translates directly into business: the Security Operations Centre, for instance, running on European soil and in the US, onboarded more clients globally in 2025 than in any year before.

We talk about fifty shades of sovereignty, because the story is never black and white

Fifty Shades of Sovereignty

Digital sovereignty was impossible to ignore in 2025, and for Cegeka it was far from an unwelcome conversation. “Our private data centers on European soil, combined with our public cloud offering, mean that clients can decide for themselves which workflows go where and adjust that decision whenever they need to,” Rottier says. “We call it ‘fifty shades of sovereignty’ because the story is never black and white. Most situations land somewhere in the grey, and whatever shade a client needs, we can deliver.” 

Demand is sharpest where the stakes are highest: finance and insurance, utilities, and government for instance; critical sectors where the question of where data lives and who controls ithas long since moved from a compliance checkbox to a boardroom priority.

The Era of AI Agents 

2025 was, above all, the year of AI Agents. “A prime example of what that means in practice is our work at VTS (Verstrengd Toezicht Subsidies),” Rottier says, “where AI agents work alongside human inspectors to support subsidy audits for the Flemish government. Invoice checks that once took 15 minutes now take six seconds, 100% control has replaced what was previously only sampling, and the estimated annual value runs to between five and ten million euro.” VTS won the Best AI Project Award at the Channel Awards 2026 and picked up several further nominations besides.

“We tend to look in only one direction when it comes to AI: at the big, awe-inspiring projects,” Rottier says. “I call those the rainbows — AI in warfare, AI in healthcare, the kind that ‘wows’ a boardroom. But that’s not where most of the impact is happening.”

“The real shift is quieter,” he continues. “Generative AI and AI Agents are embedding themselves into the daily rhythm of work for everyone, checking invoices, validating data, flagging anomalies, drafting reports. Task by task, process by process, they are transforming operations, not through sudden disruption, but through constant, incremental optimization. It’s like growing grass. You don’t see it happening. There’s no dramatic moment, no rainbow, very little ‘wow’ at first. But day after day, the field changes, and one day you realize that everything is different. We’ve been gazing up at the rainbows the whole time.”

AI Agents are transforming operations not through sudden disruption, but through constant, incremental optimization.

An Army of Ten Million

The scale of that quiet change is worth sitting with. “Belgium has five million salaried workers,” Rottier says. 

“Pair each of them with an AI agent that helps them do their job a little better and a little faster every single day, and the cumulative effect over time dwarfs any single transformative project. Just imagine the impact of an army of ten million, instead of five.”

Keeping that army close to home is not just a matter of preference. “AI agents are trained within a culture,” Rottier continues. “The way they reason, the assumptions they make, the decisions they nudge people towards, all of that is shaped by their environment. If you outsource that completely to another culture, you end up with agents that make decisions that don’t necessarily reflect who you are and what you value. That is why sovereign AI is not just a technical question. It is a deeply human one.”

Sovereign AI is not just a technical question. It is a deeply human one.

Cegeka knows how to create rainbows. But it also looks down at the grass growing. “In the agent economy now taking shape, the real opportunity lies in helping organizations put the right agents to work, built on the right values, for the right people.”

Technology companies sit closer to their clients' success than at any other time. Increasingly, it is the technology beneath an organization that decides how far and how fast it can grow. 

Across our sector, 2025 brought real pressure. Private and public markets became more cautious. Technology continued to move faster than many organizations could keep pace with. AI moved from experimentation towards execution. Cybersecurity, resilience, data control, regulatory pressure, and digital sovereignty became board-level priorities. Across every industry, technology moved closer to the center of business strategy. These shifts are still accelerating. 

Over more than three decades, Cegeka has grown into a strong European technology company with an expanding global footprint. That strength rests on trusted client relationships, deep technical expertise, and a broad portfolio of capabilities across cloud, cybersecurity, data and AI, business solutions, application services, digital workplace, and managed services. 
 
Together, these strengths have given Cegeka a solid foundation for the moment we are in. In a landscape like this, clients need partners who understand their business and know their industry as well as they do. With our strong European core and the scale to deliver globally, we are able to meet clients across a broad spectrum of needs from public cloud to fully sovereign environments, and to move with them as their needs change. In a market that increasingly turns on trust and control, that combination matters more than ever. 
 
Our clients show what this looks like in practice. At VTS, which oversees more than €18 billion in Flemish government subsidies, AI agents built with Cegeka cut invoice processing from 15 minutes to 6 seconds, replacing sampling with full coverage of every claim. At NIBC, years of close work led the bank to describe Cegeka simply as an extension of its own IT organization.  
 
Across our clients, the same pattern holds: deep understanding of their industry, technology delivered reliably and at scale, and a true partnership behind the result. These are the strengths that set Cegeka apart.  
 
As Group CEO, from 1 May 2026, my focus is to sharpen and build on these strengths in three areas. The first is industry depth, understanding our clients' businesses well enough to engage with their strategy, not only their requirements. The second is end-to-end service, ensuring clients experience the full strength of Cegeka as one company, brought together around their priorities. The third is continued international growth, extending the reach we have built in our home markets into new geographies across Europe and beyond, on the strength of the expertise and trust we have already earned. Together, these priorities will help us create more value for clients, strengthening Cegeka for the years ahead.  
 
My thanks go to everyone across Cegeka for the work they delivered throughout 2025, and to our clients and partners for their continued trust. There is important work ahead, and I look forward to building the next phase of Cegeka together. 

2025 was a year that tested us, and the numbers reflect that honestly. Revenue came in at €1.28 billion, broadly stable in a market shaped by geopolitical uncertainty and cautious client spending, with EBITDA of €118.4 million. We absorbed the cost of structural measures we knew were necessary, and profitability reflected those choices. 

What I am proud of is how we responded. Across the group, our teams made difficult decisions with professionalism and commitment. We streamlined, sharpened our focus, and reinforced the foundations of the business. None of that is glamorous work, but it is the kind of work that determines whether a company is genuinely built to last, and Cegeka has been built to last for more than thirty years. 

The strategic direction is clear. Artificial intelligence, cyber resilience and sovereign infrastructure are no longer peripheral concerns for our clients: They sit at the heart of board agendas across every sector we serve. Cegeka is well positioned in exactly these areas.  

But what truly sets us apart is how we bring these capabilities to market: with deep industry focus, an end-to-end portfolio, and the kind of client centricity that has always been our hallmark. Knowing our clients' businesses from the inside, and being genuinely committed to their outcomes, is what allows us to turn technological change into lasting advantage. 

I am pleased to welcome Koen Deryckere as our new CEO as of May 1, 2026. Koen brings the leadership and the energy this next chapter calls for, and I have full confidence in his ability to take Cegeka forward. The culture of entrepreneurship, craftsmanship and genuine client partnership that defines Cegeka is in good hands. I also want to extend a personal thank you to Bart Watteeuw, who led the group as CEO ad interim with great dedication and steadiness during a demanding period. 

To our more than 9,000 colleagues, and to the clients and partners who stayed the course with us through a demanding year: Thank you. 2025 gave us a solid foundation. 2026 is where we build on it.