100 hottest Irish start-ups to watch in 2025
View original article at Think Business
Here is our listing of the hot young start-up businesses from across Ireland who will do great things in 2025.
From AI and fintech to e-commerce, medtech and retail, Ireland’s growing entrepreneurial landscape boasts a dynamic mix of start-ups.
This listing is by no means exhaustive but merely a round-up of those start-ups that have crossed our radar in the past year and whose ambitions will carry them into 2025 and beyond.
It is indicative of the kind of businesses from all corners of Ireland that have their eye on a global prize and the kind of leadership driving them forward.
&Open
Ciara Flood, Jonathan Legge and Mark Legge founded &Open in 2017 to fix corporate gifting by delivering better gifts at scale. Active in 120+ countries, &Open helps brands curate high-quality, design-led, and responsibly-sourced gifts for customers around the world. &Open has already grown its team to more than 90 people with employees across Ireland, the UK, and the US, and plans to open an office in New York City in the next year. The launch of On-Demand in 2022 not only enables &Open to extend its offering to more companies around the world, but also provides a platform for emerging brands, local vendors, causes, and subscription services to reach new audiences. A $26m Series A round in 2022 brings &Open’s total capital raised to $33.2m.
Assiduous
Assiduous, headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin, was founded by experienced investment bankers Fergal Meegan and Barry Murphy. The young business is embedding the latest AI methodologies in its proprietary workflows and is presently working with a small number of pilot customers to perfect its solution. The business recently secured a €500,000 funding package from EIT Digital together with an investment from Enterprise Ireland through the Pre-Seed Start Fund (PSSF) to commercialise Assiduous’ AI native advisory engine over the coming six months. – pic
Amply Discovery
Queen’s University Belfast spin-out Amply Discovery was established in 2021 to commercialise a drug discovery platform developed by the university’s School of Biological Science. The business is focused on the global health threat of antimicrobial resistance and is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover new anti-infective products. Earlier this year it raised £1.4m in grant funding to develop its drug discovery platform.
Aurigen
Galway medtech AuriGen aims to provide governments and private healthcare insurers with an alternative to the existing expensive multi-procedure therapies which are currently required to treat challenging heart failure/arrhythmia patients. To address these challenges, AuriGen Medical has created the first device to integrate stroke prevention, heart failure monitoring and arrhythmia management in a single 30-minute day case procedure. AuriGen’s devices will include smart sensors which detect changes in the heart in real-time, resulting in earlier and more accurate data. This patient data is transferred live from their handheld receiver at home to the secure cloud which is instantly accessible by their doctor, helping them to intervene faster, preventing hospitalisations, while improving quality and length of life. Founded by Dr John Thompson, Siora MacClean and Tony O’Halloran, the business recently launched a €750,000 crowdfunding campaign and also recently raised €1.75m from institutional investors in Ireland, bringing total funding to over €15m.
BeyondBMI
Beyondbmi, which is headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin, offers a unique approach to addressing obesity through personalised medical interventions, community support, and cutting-edge technology. A UCD School of Medicine spin-out Beyondbmi was founded by medical doctor Dr Harriet Treacy and product designer Peter Lumley with support from senior team members including world-leading obesity scientists and clinicians, Professor Carel Le Roux and Dr Werd Al-Najim, UCD School of Medicine and UCD Conway Institute and Professor Alex Miras, Ulster University. The business recently raised €1m in a seed funding round led by private investors and Enterprise Ireland.
Bluedrop Medical
Bluedrop Medical has developed a device which diabetic patients use to scan their feet at home. This scan is then uploaded to the cloud and checked by AI to see if they are at risk of developing a diabetic foot ulcer, which if left unchecked can lead to amputation. Amputations caused by this have increased in Ireland by 45% in the last decade. Bluedrop Medical was founded by Chris Murphy and Simon Kiersey in 2015 to reduce the rate of preventable amputations for people afflicted with diabetes. Across the US and Europe, more than 250,000 amputations associated with diabetes occur each year, resulting in healthcare costs of over €30bn. In 2021, 645 of those amputations took place in Ireland, an increase of 45% over the previous decade. The business recently raised €10.5m in a funding round that will enable it to create 25 new jobs.
Bounce Insights
Dublin start-up Bounce Insights is transforming market research as we know it, enabling researchers to get answers directly from their target market. The young Dublin company is moving the dial on market research, changing the narrative from “we think” to “we know” directly from the Bounce Insights dashboard. Bounce Insights was founded by five Trinity College Students (now graduates), from both business and computer science backgrounds who started working as a team back in January 2019. The business recently opened an office in the UK to spearhead its European expansion.
BuyMedia
Buymedia is building a community of what it terms “advertising superheroes” by helping SMEs to grow through more effective advertising.
The company claims to have built a world’s first in terms of an online platform that helps SME advertisers to plan, purchase, manage and monitor their advertising across all media, both traditional and digital, to increase return on investment from advertising.
“We believe that SMEs are the real business superheroes – they work hard, the support their community, their lives are a constant struggle and they have to compete for customers with big brands who have better insights and data, greater resources and expertise,” said co-founder and CEO Fergal O’Connor.
The Galway business recently revealed plans to create 100 jobs over the next four years.
Ceroflo
Galway-based Ceroflo has developed a disruptive technology to revolutionise the treatment of intracranial atherosclerotic disease (ICAD), a leading cause of stroke. Ceroflo brings together a stellar team from the Irish medical device industry, including co-founder and chair Eamon Brady; co-founder John O’Dea, CEO Chloe Brown, CTO Brendan Casey and advisor John O’Shaughnessy. The Ceroflo SubMaxT Stent represents a game-changer in the treatment of ICAD as its shape and structure has been developed to suit the unique challenges of this disease. It is designed to gently increase vital blood flow to the brain while reducing the risks associated with first-generation devices, including haemorrhage and stroke. – pic
CitySwift
CitySwift specialises in helping local bus networks run more efficiently through the use of predictive analytics and big data. Founded by Brian O’Rourke and Alan Farrelly, CitySwift is a data analytics business on the move. The business recently raised €7m in a funding round led by Gresham House Ventures. The round also included all existing investors following including Irelandia Investments, the Western Development Commission and ACT Venture Capital with the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF). This was followed by the opening of CitySwift’s first office in the UK and plans to create 50 new jobs. Founded in 2016, CitySwift is a homegrown Galway headquartered company with a rapidly expanding team of 65 employees building an international roadmap. A market leader working with all the leading UK operators and Public Sector Authorities, the business has consistently doubled recurring revenue over the last three years and is expanding globally into Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and South East Asia.
CleverCards
Since CleverCards’ official market launch in 2023 as a digital payments platform, the company has experienced substantial growth, onboarding over 10,000 businesses directly with 350,000 users in 92 countries. In June it emerged that CleverCards raised €8m in funding from Pluxee, a global player in Employee Benefits and Engagement, as well an additional investment from existing investors. Led by Kealan Lennon, CleverCards has already grown into one of the world’s leading digital payments platforms, enabling businesses and public sector organisations to configure digital Mastercard’s themselves and send them to anyone, anywhere, anytime to download instantly.
Clia
Winner of the 2024 NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition’s Sustainability Prize, Clia is developing software-as-a-service which plugs into existing cardiac rehabilitation services to improve support and treatment for people at risk of cardiac disease. Using wearable health data Clia aims to track and provide insights in heart health, offering links to structured exercise services and give check-ups with cardiac specialist physiotherapists.
Climeaction
Cork-based Climeaction is a multi-award-winning climate action solutions provider that works with business clients to review and focus on their ESG performance. Its management team has more than 50 years’ experience working with high calibre clients. A recent financing deal with Bank of Ireland has given the consulting firm the wind beneath its sales to pursue a recent MBO and expand into the US. Since the financing to enable the MBO from Leading Edge, its former parent firm, Climeaction has also secured a €2.3m investment from the Davy EIIS fund.
Cozmotec
Cuty Gupta’s Dublin tech firm Cozmotec makes tech accessible and profitable for businesses. Gupta (pictured) has identified a gap in the market where SMEs are falling behind in terms of technology and are failing to make use of more efficient options. The CosmoTec team is comprised of experienced project managers, software developers, innovation experts and business leaders driven by solving business problems with technology solutions. – pic
Coroflo
Coroflo is a medtech company that monitors breastfeeding to know how much baby is getting, real time data tracked on your phone. Led by CEO Rosanne Longmore, the business recently opened a new headquarters at DCU Alpha in Dublin following a successful funding round of €3m that brought total investment to date to more than €6m.
CreditLogic
CreditLogic is a B2B digital mortgage lending and SaaS platform enabling banks to provide new mortgages. Founded in 2018 by Eddie Dillon, Gavin Bennett, Martin Scott and Mary Brennan, the business recently raised €3.5m to fund its European expansion.
The CX Academy
The CX Academy is the industry standard for professional accreditation in Customer Experience learning. The business recently raised €1.5m in funding from the EIIS Innovation Fund.
Cytidel
Cytidel is an Irish-based SaaS Security and Business Intelligence company that transforms how organisations identify, triage and remediate their cyber risks. Matthew Conlon (ex-Accenture and Workhuman) and Conor Flannery (ex-Integrity360 and Accenture) co-founded Cytidel in 2021 after spending a decade in cyber security across IT, finance and policing. Having witnessed first-hand how cyber security teams are overwhelmed with the quantity of cyber risks, the pair developed Cytidel. Cytidel works with blue-chip customers including An Post and Carne Group, enabling their security teams to operate with over 95% enhanced efficiency. The business last year secured €1.35m in a seed round led by Elkstone Ventures and Enterprise Ireland. – pic
Dimply
Dimply helps financial services firms to to unlock the value of financial data and embed intelligent insurance, pension and wealth experiences and communicate better with their customers online. The business was founded in 2020 by Alan Quinlan, Colm McLoughlin and Johnny Kane and is led by CEO Jackie Dunn. In March 2024 it raises €1.5m in funding.
Evervault
Founded by Shane Curran, Evervault is creating a data privacy toolkit that developers can “bake in” into new products. The company in 2022 raised $16m in a Series A round led by Index Ventures. In 2019 when Curran was just 19, the company raised $3.2m in seed funding in a round led by venerable Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital along with Kleiner Perkins, Frontline, and SV angel along with some unnamed tech innovators and investors. In May it emerged that Evervault is entering the payments space with an independent payments security platform that will give fintechs, banks and merchants total control over their payment stack without compromising compliance or security.
Eppione
Eppione’s platform helps to boost employees’ engagement with their benefits package, while enabling employers to gain deep insights into uptake and drive informed decisions when changing their offerings. The People Analytics module creates automated reports into areas including gender pay gaps, workforce diversity and absence trends across the business. Founded in 2016 by three friends and benefits enthusiasts – David Kindlon, Neil Fallon and Ernest Legrand – today Eppione has a world-class team of experts in benefits, insurance and financial advice, helping businesses navigate the complex options available to them.