INNOPS / ABOUT
WHO WE ARE

About innops: AI engineering from Antwerp, AI-native by operation.

Built for the gap between idea and live in production. A gap most AI shops bill you to discover, not to cross.

2025
Founded
1–2
Builds at a time
100%
Senior on the work
0
Slide factories
01 · WHY INNOPS

The story is short.

Two years building AI in production taught one thing: most strategy work dies in the gap between the deck and live in production. The team that wrote the recommendations isn't the team that has to live with them, and by month three the document is on someone's hard drive, slowly composting.

innops started in 2025 with a single rule: every engagement ends with something running in production. Not a roadmap, not a maturity model. A workflow your team is using on Monday. Strategy that doesn't ship isn't strategy. It's a PDF.

We're AI-native by operation because the work itself is. Research, synthesis, code, evals. The studio runs on AI, which is why we stay small, charge flat fees, and still ship in weeks instead of quarters. Senior engineering at small-studio prices, because we run what we sell.

See it in practice: selected AI case studies, including a travel agency's AI assistant and a construction company's site and assistant. Or start from the three services.

02 · VOICE ANCHORS

Two stories
that built innops.

Brand voice is a reaction to specific moments. These are the two that made innops the studio it is.

STORY · 01A RECEPTIONIST. A BIN.
An AI consultant demoed a receptionist-replacement to the receptionist. She watched the demo, walked him out, and threw the proposal in the bin.

The software was probably fine. The sale was dead the moment he pitched over the person who would have used it. Buy-in from the operator isn't a soft skill. It's part of the system. AI that's hostile to its users doesn't reach production. It reaches a bin.

PRINCIPLE
Build with the people who'll use it. Never over them.
STORY · 02PILOTS THAT NEVER LAND.
At my last job I watched AI projects clear the POC. Clear the pilot. And quietly never reach production. Same pattern, different team, every time.

The work that gets a green light from a demo is not the work that survives a Monday. Production has different physics: latency, edge cases, ownership, integration, eval, monitoring. None of it shows up in the slide deck. All of it shows up when the pilot tries to become real.

PRINCIPLE
Production is the destination. Pilots when they help us get there.
03 · PRINCIPLES

Five rules
we hold to.

In that order. When two of them conflict, the earlier one wins.

01
Ship in weeks, not quarters.
If a workflow can't reach production in twelve weeks, we're solving the wrong problem. We re-scope before we extend.
02
Senior on the work. Always.
The person who sold you the engagement is the person doing the work. No bait-and-switch to juniors. No partner-on-the-cover, associates-in-the-trenches.
03
Hand off the system, not just the work.
Documentation, runbooks, training, monitoring. Your team owns it after we leave. That's the engagement, not the optional Phase 4.
04
Numbers, attached to workflows.
We don't quote "up to 10× productivity". We name the workflow, the baseline, the delta, and the measurement window. If we can't measure it, we don't claim it.
05
Outcome-based retainers only.
Flat fees per engagement, scoped before we start. Continuing work runs on outcome-based or scope-defined retainers: capped, narrow, terminable monthly. No time-based or activity-based retainers.
04 · THE TEAM

One operator
on the work.

Zakaria leads every engagement himself. No project manager who relays to engineers. The lead contact stays the same from the first call to the last handoff review.

Zakaria Basraoui
FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL
Zakaria Basraoui

Two years shipping production AI in real businesses: computer vision and MLOps at Movu Robotics, the unglamorous parts. Now applying the same engineering rigor to operators wanting to move from prototype to production. Started innops in 2025 to build the AI he kept wishing existed at his last job.

Reads more about practical AI than is probably healthy. Based in Antwerp, active across Flanders. Speaks NL / EN / FR / AR.

Now booking · one Build slot open
05 · BELIEFS

What we lean toward, and against.

Useful when you're trying to figure out whether we'll get on. If three of the "against" items sound like Tuesday at your shop, we might not be the right fit. Honestly.

WE LEAN TOWARD
  • Outcomes you can measure, named before we start
  • Plain language. Concrete targets ("this week", "live in 6 weeks", a named baseline to measure against)
  • The person who sells you the work does the work. Specialists join per project, never a junior bait-and-switch
  • Test on real data. We check if it works before it goes live
  • Documentation your team will actually open six months later
WE LEAN AGAINST
  • "Unleash", "transform", "revolutionize". Capability-hyperbole
  • Multi-quarter roadmaps that quietly become the deliverable
  • Pilots designed to require Phase 2. We scope the whole arc up front
  • Demos that show off the model. Production that shows up to work
  • Sparkle emojis, three exclamation points, "powered by AI" as a tagline
Sound like a fit?
A 30-minute call is enough
to figure it out.
Book a call →