Due to low company tax and authorities incentives, Dublin has hosted the European headquarters of many giant US expertise corporations—Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Microsoft all have places of work within the metropolis’s Silicon Docks.
“The big US companies operated independently of the startup world for many years,” explains Will Prendergast, companion at Frontline Ventures. “But in the past five years, US technology companies have been building product and engineering functions here, and that talent is starting to spill out, driving startup creation.”
Authorities assist through Enterprise Eire’s Pre-Seed Begin Fund, designed to speed up early stage startups, and hubs reminiscent of Dogpatch Labs are supporting this wave of latest expertise. “Ireland does have a capital issue,” says worker advantages startup Kota cofounder Luke Mackey. “There are lots of ways to raise €1 million but not many ways to raise €10 million.”
With latest funding rounds led by each US and native VCs of €10 million ($11.1 million) or extra, that appears set to alter.
Openvolt
Openvolt is constructing an API that collates carbon emissions knowledge throughout Europe to provide to vitality transition corporations. It’s no coincidence that the intention is to make an API that’s as easy to work with as Stripe’s fee system—Don O’Leary, Openvolt’s CTO, was Stripe’s EMEA head of buyer engineering. With CEO Dave Curran, he launched the corporate in 2023. Openvolt’s first step was securing real-time knowledge from 90 million good meters throughout the continent, with gasoline consumption and the carbon depth of electrical energy provides to observe. The corporate raised a pre-seed €1.5 million ($1.6 million) led by Cavalry Ventures. Its first consumer is Helios Vitality, which is able to use Openvolt knowledge in its audit of consumer’s vitality use. openvolt.com
Tines
Tines is an automation platform for IT and safety groups to automate any handbook activity utilizing a menu of seven widespread instructions, reminiscent of “HTTP request,” which sends or receives knowledge from one other system. Tines targets easy duties that groups spend essentially the most time on—onboarding customers or triaging low-level safety incidents as an illustration—to scale back “alert fatigue.” Launched with an $11 million (€10.2 million) Sequence A spherical led by Accel, Index Ventures, and Blossom Capital in December 2019, the corporate has raised $146.2 million (€130.6 million) general. With 200 workers throughout the USA, Eire, Australia, and Canada, income has grown 200 p.c since Could 2024. Prospects embody Databricks, Mars Inc., and Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory. tines.com
Marker Video
Marker Video is a user-generated branded content material platform, promoting product assessment movies by strange individuals to manufacturers and retailers for a flat charge. Launched as Marker Content material in 2022 with €600,000 ($670,00) from Enterprise Eire, founder Greta Dunne switched from weblog publish to video in February 2023. “I met the head of marketing at Estée Lauder who had just pivoted from influencers to ordinary people after their data showed the more authentic the content, the better the response,” the previous copywriter explains. Prospects can scan a QR code in resorts, or on merchandise, and add video opinions that are tagged and listed. The movies promote for between €100 and €200 ($111 to $223). Manufacturers obtain limitless use and creators are given 50 p.c of the charge. A stealth launch in April and offers with Unilever and Acer Lodges noticed 5,000 creators a month be part of the positioning. A second spherical raised €200,000 ($223,000) from Enterprise Eire and investor angels reminiscent of Brian Caulfield, in addition to David Byrne of Digital Irish to fund a full launch within the fall. markervideo.com
CaliberAI
CaliberAI is an AI-powered content material moderation platform that searches for dangerous and defamatory content material. Performing as a “spell check for libel and hate speech,” it notifies information publishers and social media customers once they’re getting near the road. It was based by a father-and-son staff—Conor Brady was editor-in-chief of The Irish Instances and Neil Brady was a journalist for The Guardian. An Enterprise Eire grant of €300,000 ($335,000), adopted by €850,000 ($950,000) pre-seed launched the corporate in 2019. The staff trains CaliberAI and different giant language fashions on particularly created knowledge units—a paucity of defamatory materials to coach on meant the corporate constructed its personal. Prospects embody Mediahuis, the Day by day Mail, Meta, and quite a few regulation companies concerned in AI. “Misinformation and hate speech is eroding democracy because news publishers are on their knees,” explains Neil. “Generative AI chatbots and the companies that make them are not going to be afforded the same legal protections as social media users.” caliberai.web
EdgeTier
“Customer service is broken—no one likes fighting with a chatbot to get through to a human to solve their problem,” says EdgeTier CEO and cofounder Shane Lynn. The corporate’s AI displays buyer conversations with name facilities, listens out for points and presents coaching to people primarily based on the conversations it has analyzed. Lynn, CCO Bart Lehane and CTO Ciarán Tobin launched with a seed spherical in 2019 and have since raised €7.5 million ($8.3 million) in two rounds lead by Smedvig Capital and ACT VC. The corporate now operates in additional than 20 nations throughout Europe and the Americas, working with Abercrombie & Fitch, Ryanair, the TUI journey firm, Electrical Eire, and Tipico. edgetier.com
Noloco
Noloco is a platform for any enterprise to construct an app utilizing a point-and-click interface, with out the necessity for software program or coding expertise. Founder Darragh Mc Kay describes it because the Webflow for enterprise apps. As a software program engineer, Mc Kay realized “how few of the tools I had were available to non-software engineers and how complicated they were to use”. Noloco has a sequence of templates for widespread HR, undertaking administration and stock apps in addition to a clean canvas the place customers can drag and drop the duties they want apps to carry out. Based in summer time 2021, seed funding in February 2022 raised $1.4 million (€1.8 million), led by Unpopular Ventures and Accel Angels, and the app builder was launched in July 2022. Prospects are SMEs—primarily development corporations, advertising and marketing companies, accountants and legal professionals. Out there as a subscription mannequin, income has grown 140 p.c up to now 12 months. noloco.io
Inspeq ai
Inspeq.ai is an analysis platform for product groups creating AI purposes. It displays app improvement, particularly LLMs, to guarantee that the output is correct, constant, doesn’t hallucinate and is free from biases and destructive tones. The thought for the corporate got here to CEO Apoorva Kumar and CTO Ramanujam MV, previously product managers at Microsoft and Meta respectively. The pair discovered that the LLMs they labored with would typically “hallucinate,” producing grammatically right however factually inaccurate info. After constructing a proof of idea on the Founders Expertise Accelerator in late 2023 that diminished hallucination points by 80 p.c, they raised €1.1 million ($1.2 million) in a spherical lead by Certain Valley Ventures in Could 2024 to develop operations in Eire, London, and India. inspeq.ai
Barespace.io
Barespace CEO and cofounder Conor Moules labored at an area hair salon when he was a youngster. Then, when he joined meals supply app Bamboo in his twenties, he realized to his shock that typical salon transactions have been greater than 10 instances bigger than typical meals supply orders. He based Barespace to assist barbershops, salons, and spa companies automate their enterprise administration with a complete SaaS platform that mixes appointment scheduling, consumer historical past and advertising and marketing designed for use by non-technical workers. Based in March 2022 by Moules and COO Glenn McGoldrick, it closed a €1.5 million ($1.6 million) pre-seed spherical in August 2024 from traders reminiscent of Brian Caulfield, chair of Scale Eire; Barry Napier, CEO of Cubic Telecom; and Rick Kelley, the previous managing director of Meta Eire. Barespace has processed greater than €10 million ($11.1 million) in funds in its first 20 months since launch, rising the enterprise by greater than 300 p.c. barespace.io
Gazelle Wind Energy
Gazelle Wind Energy is constructing floating wind turbine platforms far out within the deep sea. Ninety-nine per cent of wind farms are mounted to the ocean flooring in comparatively shallow depths. Nevertheless, extra constant and stronger winds are discovered above a lot deeper water. Antonio García—racing yacht engineer and uncle to Gazelle founder Jon Salazar—devised a dynamic floating platform with anchor strains hooked up to the seabed, accompanied by a counterweight that balances the platform in tough seas. The corporate has raised $11.3 million (€10.1 million) in fairness thus far, led by Katapult Group, and has a sequence A spherical looming. Salazar’s subsequent aim is lowering the fee to succeed in the “Henry Ford moment”—an affordable, scalable platform that’s easy to assemble, set up, and function. gazellewindpower.com
Antler Bio
Antler Bio’s EpiHerd screening platform examines RNA in blood from dairy cows—the software by which genes are expressed within the surroundings. “Farmers think about breeding for perfect genetics,” cofounder Maria Jensen explains, “then wonder why the animal isn’t delivering.” EpiHerd reveals environmental results on gene expression—illness, food regimen, farm infrastructure or stress—present beneficial actions particular to farm and animals, and monitor the influence adjustments. Cofounded by Jensen and Nathalie Conte in November 2020, the corporate raised greater than €1 million ($1.1 million), led by the Nest household workplace. The primary paying farm in November 2023 elevated milk manufacturing by 30 p.c. Antler expects to succeed in 173 farms by the top of 2024. Plans embody validating EpiHerd to display screen for endemic ailments, reminiscent of bovine TB. antlerbio.com
This text first appeared within the November/December 2024 subject of WIRED UK.
