Baker Tilly’s Bet On Deep Tech And AI

As Baker Tilly Luxembourg joins a new Benelux platform, Partner Michaël Duval explains what it means for founders, scale-ups and AI adoption.

Baker Tilly Luxembourg is joining forces with its Belgian and Dutch counterparts, forming a 1,500-strong Benelux platform. For tech founders, the move promises deeper M&A expertise, faster cross-border structuring, and a firm openly rethinking its own role around AI and data.

Michaël Duval, Partner & Head of Innovation at Baker Tilly Luxembourg, talks Benelux integration, deep tech clients, and where AI fits in.

With the new Benelux dimension, what new opportunities does this open for the Innovation practice and startup support?

The biggest gain is depth of resources and network reach. Our startups and scale-ups almost always have ambitions beyond Luxembourg from day one — they incorporate here, then quickly open subsidiaries abroad, with all the transfer pricing, substance, VAT and multi-jurisdiction payroll questions that come with it. Handling that on one platform, with teams sharing the same methodology, changes the quality of service a founder gets — one point of contact instead of three separate advisors.

The second gain, and probably the one with the most impact on future scale-ups, is corporate finance and M&A. Our Belgian and Dutch colleagues run structured transaction services and M&A teams with real mid-market experience — valuation, sale or fundraising prep, vendor due diligence, buy-side due diligence, deal modelling, negotiating price mechanisms and financial clauses. That capability is hard to build at scale on the Luxembourg market alone, and it matters because a scale-up’s trajectory almost always runs through a Series B, an acquisition, a private equity entry, or an eventual exit. Too often today, founders have to change advisors mid-journey, right when historical knowledge of the file is most valuable.

For international groups — American and Asian players especially — using Luxembourg as a European entry point, particularly in space and deep tech, this regional dimension also makes the proposition clearer. They’re not looking for a country, they’re looking for a gateway into Europe.

What are your priorities for growing this practice in the coming months?

First, deepening the verticals where we’ve built real differentiation rather than expanding scope for its own sake — space and deep tech, distributed ledger technologies, and increasingly quantum. These are sectors where understanding the business model matters as much as accounting and tax technicality, and where accumulated experience can’t be substituted.

Second, continuing to industrialise our entry-level offering for young companies. A founder starting out needs a clear, predictable framework, not hourly billing on subjects they don’t yet master. The more standardised the base, the more time we can spend on what actually creates value — tax and financial structuring, financing, preparing the next steps.

Baker Tilly Luxembourg Joins Benelux Platform As New Leadership Takes Shape

Third, better connecting our support for young companies with the network’s transactional expertise, so a company we’ve followed since incorporation can approach its first major deal without rebuilding its file or switching advisory ecosystems.

Fourth — and this is a discussion I want to open rather than settle — is extending our service range beyond traditional accounting and tax: digital, ERP implementation, financial data structuring, and above all AI. Founders are already asking us about these spontaneously. The question is where we’re legitimate to intervene directly, where it’s better to partner with specialists, and at what pace. I’d rather move on this with rigor than with announcements — but the direction is clear.

What are today’s main needs of the startups you support, and how can Baker Tilly respond beyond traditional financial support?

Bookkeeping, tax and payroll remain the foundation, but they’re no longer the main conversation. Founders want early input on the tax, accounting and financial consequences of structuring choices — flows between holding and operating entities, substance, transfer pricing, how equity incentive schemes get taxed. The legal form is then finalised with their lawyer or notary, but our upstream analysis avoids decisions that are costly to correct later, especially the day an investor or acquirer scrutinises the structure.

Next comes financing and transaction readiness. A fundraise or a sale isn’t won on the pitch alone — it’s won on passing due diligence without friction, which means reliable accounts, coherent intragroup documentation, a controlled tax position and financial information available fast. We’re increasingly involved months before the first investor contact, which is exactly where the complementarity with the network’s transactional teams pays off.

Third, access to innovation support schemes and IP tax treatment — R&D aid and favourable IP income regimes are a major lever for a growing company, but they rest on technical eligibility conditions and demanding documentation that need to be anticipated from the project’s design stage, not requested after the fact.

Fourth — and the most interesting for the years ahead — tools and technology. Many young companies hit a ceiling not because of the market, but because of internal infrastructure: manual processes, an information system that hasn’t kept pace, financial data scattered across tools. Choosing and implementing the right ERP, digitising flows, automating reporting — these have become growth topics in their own right. AI accelerates that equation further. It’s reshaping our own profession, and I see that as something to get ahead of rather than react to. At the same time, clients are asking legitimate questions about integrating it into their operations — data governance, financial reliability, and how investors will assess their tech maturity tomorrow.

Finally, there’s the compliance calendar — declarative, accounting and regulatory deadlines that always arrive earlier than founders expect. Our role is largely to flag them before they become blocking, typically when opening a bank account or bringing in an institutional investor, and to bring in the right specialist when a topic falls outside our scope.

If I had to sum it up: our added value isn’t really in technical execution — plenty of firms can do that. It’s in sequencing these topics correctly across a company’s timeline and coordinating the right people, all the way through to the operations that mark the transition to scale.