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👋 Céad míle fáilte! This week, while half the country melts in a heatwave threatening to break a 139-year-old record, the Irish ecosystem is generating its own kind of heat. Grab something cold, because there's a lot to get through. 🥤
From a London fintech landing fresh funding in a tight credit market, to a drone company winning one of the UK's toughest regulatory approvals just as it pauses at home, this week's stories all share the same thread: Irish companies finding their edge somewhere other than where they started.
Let's get into it 💪
TL;DR:
✈️ Abroad: Eamonn McMahon's London fintech equipal lands £16m in a tight credit market, Manna clears one of the UK's toughest drone hurdles just as it pauses at home, and Carlow's Blacknight joins an Amsterdam-based hosting group.
🏠 Home: Trinity spin-out CroíValve tops up its Series B to $36m, Trading 212 sets up a 40-job Dublin hub, and HR Duo picks up €1.6m.
👑 Founder: Neil Dillon is building Solas Compliance from London, plus two more Irish builders new to the map.
🧠 Brain Food: FIFA signs a Dundalk grass expert for the World Cup, 10 lessons from inside Intercom's road to a $3.6bn exit, Research Ireland's CEO on why Ireland needs its own Station F, and Ireland flirts with breaking a 139-year-old heat record.
Enjoy ☕
LATEST UPDATES
News from abroad ✈️
Eamonn McMahon, Equipal
🇬🇧 Irish founder's London fintech lands £16m amid tight credit market: Eamonn McMahon's equipal, a London-based fintech that finances business equipment has pulled in £16.25m from Altum Capital Management, split between a £1.25m equity stake and a £15m forward-flow lending facility. McMahon (founded 2018) says the deal came together despite a "challenging" market for platform lenders. The cash will go on hiring across credit, data and business development as the team grows to 12. Read more
🇬🇧 Manna clears one of the UK's toughest drone hurdles, just as it pauses at home: Bobby Healy's Manna Air Delivery has become one of the first drone delivery companies to win a SAIL III Operational Authorisation from the UK Civil Aviation Authority — among the most advanced approvals available for uncrewed aircraft there. The timing is notable: Manna paused its delivery operations in Ireland this week, citing the lack of a national planning framework, while pointing to the UK, US and UAE as markets where the regulatory path to scale is clearer. The company is keeping its R&D, manufacturing and engineering base in Ireland and says it expects to come back to Irish deliveries once a clearer policy framework exists. Read more
🇳🇱 Carlow host joins a European roll-up: Blacknight, Ireland's largest independent web hosting company and domain registrar, has joined Amsterdam-based group Your.Online — its eighth acquisition in six months. Founders Michele Neylon and Paul Kelly stay in their roles, the brand and the ~60-strong Carlow team stay put, and the company keeps running its own data centres. Neylon, who'd turned down previous approaches that weren't the right fit, called consolidation among independent hosts "inevitable" given the infrastructure spend needed to compete with the hyperscalers. Read more
🇺🇸 Four more Irish founders land in San Francisco: Dublin's Blueprints (Ryan Morrissey and Bence Redmond) and ProvenMetal (Johnny Doyle and Will Carkner) have both secured places in Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch. Blueprints turns plain-English predictions into automated trading strategies on prediction markets; ProvenMetal builds AI-powered X-ray inspection systems for circuit boards used in aerospace and defence. Both teams are alumni of Patch, the OpenAI- and Stripe-backed talent community at Dogpatch Labs. Read more
At home 🏠
Trinity College Dublin spin-out CroíValve topped up its Series B by $20m, bringing the round to $36m (€43m including grants), with new backer BGF coming aboard to fund expanded US and EU trials of its minimally invasive heart-valve device. Read more
London-headquartered investment platform Trading 212 is setting up its first Irish office, a new European regulatory and trading hub in Dublin that will create 40 jobs over three years. Read more
Meath HR platform HR Duo picked up €1.6m to keep scaling its SME-focused HR automation tools. Read more
Irish space-tech firm Ubotica closed an $11m round led by Act Venture Capital and Greencode Ventures to grow its AI-powered marine monitoring platform. Read more
📰 Have a story that needs to be told? Drop us a note here.
🗺️ FOUNDER DIRECTORY
Neil Dillon - Solas Compliance
- Role: Founder, Solas Compliance
- Base: London, United Kingdom
- Focus: Marketing Compliance
- Team: 2
- Founded: 2024
Founder of Solas Compliance. With a law degree and MBA, Neil has held senior roles in betting, fintech, and regulated startups, Solas combines my industry insight with legal and operational expertise.
Solas, meaning “light”, was created to bring clarity, speed, and confidence to marketing compliance, empowering ambitious brands to move at the pace of opportunity without risking regulatory fallout.
Two more Irish founders new on the map:
🇺🇸 Ryan Crown | Crown Creative | New York. Global agency that builds strategy, branding, and interior design for hospitality brands like St Regis, Ritz Carlton, and Waldorf Astoria.
🇬🇧 Marie Chivers | Facilipharma | UK. Facilipharma helps pharma, biopharma, medtech, and digital health companies turn innovation into commercial value through payor research, pricing and reimbursement strategy, and medical writing from early opportunity assessment through to launch.
🍀 The Global Irish Founder Directory | The Irish diaspora is building the future in every corner of the world. Are you on the map? Join the Directory | Explore the Map
🧠 BRAIN FOOD
5 other things we are snacking on this week
FIFA signs a Dundalk grass expert for the World Cup. The pitch doctor who keeps Oriel Park playable in February is now being flown in to keep World Cup turf alive in 100°F heat. Proof that niche expertise travels further than the people who have it ever expect.
Inside Intercom: 10 lessons from a front-row seat. A reporter who met Eoghan McCabe on the back of a bus in Silicon Valley in 2014 looks back on the road to the $3.6bn Salesforce deal. The real story isn't the exit, it's the near-death pivot that made it possible.
Research Ireland's CEO wants Ireland to build its own Station F. Diarmuid O'Brien left Cambridge for this job and his pitch is blunt: FDI isn't the problem, the absence of one place where global VCs can meet the whole indigenous ecosystem at once is.
Five Irish researchers just landed a slice of an €838m EU grant. Trinity and UCD scientists among the winners of Europe's flagship fund for "ambitious, curiosity-driven" research, no strings attached.
Ireland nearly broke a 139-year-old temperature record. The same week France logged its hottest day ever. The 1887 Kilkenny mark may not survive the decade.
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