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👋 Céad míle fáilte! This week the Irish ecosystem got the exit it has been waiting for, with a twist. In 2018, Intercom raised $125m to take on Salesforce. This week, Salesforce agreed to buy it for $3.6bn. 🤯
Eoghan McCabe, Des Traynor, Ciaran Lee and David Barrett started the company in a Dublin coffee shop in 2011, moved to San Francisco, and built Ireland's first homegrown unicorn about 5,000 miles from home. They renamed it Fin last month after the AI agent they launched in 2023.
We have been on this story for years. Our 2023 deep dive 👇 tracked Intercom from that café to a category-defining product. Too few Irish companies exit at this level, so this is the new reference point. The bar just moved for whoever comes next.
Let's jump straight in. 🦘
TL;DR:
✈️ Abroad: A quiet Irish founder built a London traffic giant, Currenxie wins SEPA access for 15,000 clients, and Dubai's Irish founders pick up an award.
🏠 Home: AMCS hits a $2bn valuation as its founder steps back, KKR circles DCC at €6.6bn, and CameraMatics raises €49m.
👑 Founder: Conor Lyden of Trustap who has just raised €10m, plus two more Irish builders new to the map.
🧠 Brain Food: The FT on Ireland's Revolut effect, an Irish genomics contest, post-quantum security and 30 young Irish entrepreneurs have a crack at building a startup in 24hours.
Enjoy ☕
LATEST UPDATES
News from abroad ✈️
🇺🇸 Another lean Irish exit: Garret Flower has sold Wayleadr, the smart-parking and workplace platform he co-founded in Dublin with Daniel Paul, to a consortium led by San Francisco's Housatonic Partners. It started life as Parkpnp, an app for renting unused parking spaces, and grew into a workplace automation platform that multinationals like Uber, Google and OpenAI use to manage parking, access and real estate across 36 countries. Read more
🇬🇧 From London traffic to a quiet fortune: Damien Kelly built a traffic-management giant from a London startup, with no domain expertise on entry, his spouse as co-founder, and over a decade of unglamorous scaling. For founders eyeing London, the lesson is that a dull, essential market plus patience beats chasing hype. Read more
🇭🇰 Currenxie clears SEPA: The Hong Kong-based payments company gained SEPA participant status, opening direct euro rails to its 15,000 clients. From a European HQ in May to SEPA participation now, this is what regulatory clearance actually buys a fintech: architectural access to a whole market, not just a compliance tick. Read more
🇦🇪 Dubai‑based Irish founders recognised at home: A nomination for the Innovation Award at the Future Health Summit 2026 is putting the Gulf firmly on the diaspora map. It’s proof that the Irish tech network now runs through the Middle East too. Read more
At home 🏠
CEO Jimmy Martin has stepped back after 20 years as CEO of AMCS. The Limerick-headquartered environmental valued at $2bn in 2024 serves 5,000+ customers across 80+ countries with a 1,300-strong team.
KKR and Energy Capital Partners raised their take-private bid for DCC to about €6.6bn (£5.7bn), the largest move on an Irish-listed company in recent memory.
CameraMatics raised €49m in a Series B led by Blume Equity to scale its fleet-management platform, with blue-chip customers and a real recurring-revenue base.
Ireland published a bill to establish an independent AI Office, a domestic regulator and enforcement body for AI. It moves Ireland from passively adopting EU rules to running its own front door.
Erisbeg sold its majority stake in ORS to UK firm Goldenpeak at an enterprise value of about €175m, a reported 15x on its initial investment. Build recurring revenue in a sticky vertical, hold your margins, the exit follows.
📰 Have a story that needs to be told? Drop us a note here.
🗺️ FOUNDER DIRECTORY
Conor Lyden - Trustap
- Role: Founder & CEO, Trustap
- Base: New York, United States
- Focus: Safe online transactions
- Stage: Series A
- Team: 39
- Founded: 2017
Conor Lyden grew up in Cork and studied at University College Cork. He is the founder and CEO of Trustap, the award-winning Irish fintech that builds trust into online deals by holding a buyer's payment safely until both sides are happy.
It began as a fix for the risk in peer-to-peer transactions and now runs out of New York with a team of 39. This month it added a $10m Series A led by Aperture Capital to scale across fintech and AI commerce. From a Cork idea to a US platform solving the oldest problem in commerce, trust. Not a bad arc.
Two more Irish founders new on the map:
🇦🇺 Caoimhe Dalton | Misneach Media | Sydney. Helps founder-led eCommerce brands turn first-time buyers into repeat customers with high-performing email and retention systems, powered by AI and automation. Lifecycle marketing, productised.
🇦🇺 Damon Walsh | In Symphony | Melbourne. Cuts through the online clutter with smart, results-driven marketing campaigns built to maximise growth. A Melbourne agency founder flying the Irish flag down under.
🍀 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
30 young Irish entrepreneurs have 24 hours to build a startup as part of the Hatch105 internship, a real-life Dragons' Den experience.
The Financial Times on Ireland's Revolut revolution: what a category-leading fintech does to a local talent and startup scene, and the lessons for everyone else.
The Bar of Ireland picked Newcode as its AI platform for barristers. The legal-tech template: win the professional body first, the market follows.
Integrity360 partnered with Venari on post-quantum security, a flag for any founder in finance, health or infrastructure to start tracking quantum readiness.
UCD's Nax Bioscience and TCD's Imragen topped the inaugural Irish Genomics Business Plan Competition, a sign Ireland is getting serious about genomics.
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