Online at thirteen
PLATO terminals, before the web, before the internet reached homes. Forty-six years online and counting — "we are geeks and we mean it" is a biography, not a slogan.
About
Founded in a garage in 1991.
Reborn AI-native.
Ex Machina is not a startup, a pivot or a lab. It's the return of a name that was already building the digital future when the web was young — now armed with the technology it was always waiting for.
Founder
Brice Le Blevennec
Brice has been online since 1980 — at thirteen, on PLATO terminals. He founded Ex Machina in 1991, in a Brussels garage, building interactive media a decade before "digital agency" was a job title. He went on to co-found Emakina, "The User Agency", and led it from a handful of people to more than 1,100 across 20 countries — through an IPO in 2006 and its acquisition by EPAM in 2021.
Thirty-five years of that teaches you two things. How to deliver world-class digital work at scale. And exactly how much of the invoice pays for the scale rather than the work: the layers, the meetings, the handovers, the reporting — the machinery that large teams cannot function without.
Agentic AI removed the need for the machinery. So the original name came back: Ex Machina, reborn — the judgement and craft of the old world, none of its structure.
Brice on LinkedIn35 years ahead of schedule
The résumé behind
the arrogance.
Ex Machina, take one
Founded in a Brussels garage: interactive media and digital experiences, a decade before the industry had a name for it. The name you're reading at the top of this page is 35 years old.
CyberCafé
Ex Machina Television produces CyberCafé — a radio and TV show about geek culture on Radio 21, then RTBF, running for nearly a decade. Explaining the digital future to the mainstream, before the mainstream was online.
ContactOffice / Mailfence
Encrypted email and collaboration, founded when "webmail" was exotic — still running today. Building products, not just projects, from the start.
Emakina, "The User Agency"
Co-founded in 2001. IPO on Alternext Brussels in 2006 — a rarity for a digital agency. Grown to 1,100 people across 20 countries, then acquired by EPAM in 2021, with Brice as Chief Visionary Officer. This is the "100-people agency" of our manifesto, seen from the founder's chair — at 11× the size.
Companies on the side
Tunz, mobile payments — exited to Ogone. Objekten, a European design label. Zoetrope, generative-AI art frames. Plus 29 companies backed as a business angel, and a book of 30 science-fiction stories set in 2051 (Visions of a Better World, 2021). The pattern: build what's next, repeatedly.
Ex Machina, reborn
Agentic AI finally delivers what interactive media promised in 1991: small teams with unreasonable output. The original name returns for the moment it was always waiting for — with Brice as founder and CEO.
The team
Small by design.
Senior by necessity.
Ex Machina is a handful of very experienced people — engineers, creatives, strategists — each of whom has run teams, shipped products and survived the old model. Agents multiply what a senior person can do; they do very little for a junior one. That's why the team is built this way, and why it stays small.
Every person here is hands-on. There is nobody whose job is to manage your expectations.
- AI-native
- Founder-led
- Hands-on only
- Post-agency
The thesis
The 100-person agency was a solution to a coordination problem that no longer exists.
That's the whole thesis. The long version is the manifesto.
Next step
Tell us what you want to build.
We'll tell you if we should work together.
A short conversation. No theatre. No deck. No delay.