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A TechIreland report shows that Irish tech start-ups managed to raise €552m so far this year, boosted by a strong second quarter with multiple large funding rounds.
Fortunes appear to be reversing for Ireland’s tech start-up sector, which has had one of its best funding quarters in recent years after a flat start to 2024.
That’s according to a new report by TechIreland, which found that 172 Irish tech start-ups managed to raise €552m so far this year. The report found the second quarter of the year was the best out of the last seven quarters, with €383m raised over 62 funding rounds.
The second quarter is a significant change compared to the first quarter of 2024, which TechIreland says was the worst of the past 13 quarters.
The report said the surge in funding activity mainly came from large later-stage investments that attracted significant international funds. But TechIreland said early-stage pre-seed and seed rounds also had a strong performance, mirroring results from last year.
The report said these early tech start-ups were helped by strong support from Enterprise Ireland. The agency’s Pre-Seed Support Fund represented 78 of the companies funded so far this year.
The report says the last quarter was the best second quarter on record for significant growth rounds of more than €30m, with the biggest contributors being SyOx Therapeutics’ €70.3m round, Accounts IQ’s €60m round, GridBeyond’s €52m round, Tines’ €45m round and Xocean’s €45m round.
“There were no investments of that scale in the first quarter but there were five investments with a total of €258m in the second quarter,” the report said. “As always, given the small sample size in Ireland, these large outlier investments drive the overall total.”
But the report is not all positive, as funding for late seed and Series A rounds – investments between €1m and €4m – continue to be flat in Ireland’s tech sector. The report said these smaller rounds seem to be “underserved” by domestic funds and may be “below the radar” of international investors.
A report from TechIreland in March showed that a record number of start-ups founded by women managed to raise funding last year, but the amount of funding they raised fell by roughly 60pc.
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