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👋 Céad míle fáilte! Microsoft paid more tax to Ireland last year than it paid to the United States.
$6.5 billion to Revenue against $6.25 billion to the US federal government, on $50.5 billion of profit booked here. We only know because a new accounting standard forced a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction breakdown into the annual report for the first time. Ireland is now 30% of Microsoft's global tax bill and 81% of its foreign income.
It is the clearest picture yet of how much of this economy sits on a handful of balance sheets, and it landed in the same fortnight the Department of Finance warned we are highly exposed to an AI-driven correction in US equities.
P.S. The Irish AI 50 lands later this week as its own post. Numbers 50 to 41 first.
TL;DR:
✈️ Abroad: Belfast's 9fin lets staff cash out after a $170m raise, Horizon Quantum puts a 256-qubit machine in Dublin, Patrick Collison spends $7m fighting a California wealth tax, and Fergal Mullen's Highland Europe closes €1.1bn.
🏠 At home: Wayflyer lands $1.5bn from Fortress, Microsoft pays Ireland more than Washington, PTSB shareholders approve the €1.6bn Bawag deal, Flutter changes chief executive, and TikTok cuts 667 Dublin roles.
👑 Founder Directory: Elaine Kelly left Accenture to build Klir, the compliance platform now running water utilities across North America.
🧠 Brain food: the kit behind the data centres, Medtronic backs CoreMap, robust AI for safety-critical work, four legal tech startups, and Patrick Collison on what if you succeed.
Enjoy ☕
LATEST UPDATES
News from abroad ✈️
Steven Hunter left investment banking in 2016 to build 9fin
🇬🇧 Cashing out, Belfast style: 9fin, the debt-markets analytics platform co-founded by Belfast man Steven Hunter, has completed its first employee secondary sale, letting more than half of eligible staff turn part of their equity into cash on the back of a $170m Series C. We called 9fin a unicorn back in April; this is the part that comes afterwards, when paper becomes a deposit on a house. Read more.
🇸🇬 A 256-qubit machine is coming to Dublin: Horizon Quantum, founded by UCD physicist Dr Joe Fitzsimons, filed its first full set of results since listing on Nasdaq in March. The headline net loss of $115.2m is almost entirely a non-cash warrant charge; the operating loss was $7.2m and the company is sitting on $113.3m. The real news is further down the release. Its European HQ in Dublin is getting a 256-qubit trapped-ion system. Read more.
🇺🇸 Collison writes a $7m cheque against a wealth tax: Patrick Collison has given $7m to Building a Better California, a PAC formed this year to defeat a proposed one-off 5% levy on Californian assets over $1bn, earmarked for healthcare. Two payments, $2m in January and $5m in March, disclosed at the end of July. Sergey Brin has put in $82m. The Irish founder abroad is now also a political donor at scale. Read more.
🇬🇧 Another €1.1bn for European tech: Highland Europe, the growth-stage venture firm co-founded by Irishman Fergal Mullen, has closed a €1.1bn fund and appointed two new partners. It is already on the 9fin cap table, which tells you how small this world is. One of the larger European closes of the year, and one of the biggest cheque-writers for European scale-ups answers to an Irish accent. Read more.
At home 🏠
Wayflyer signed a $1.5bn forward-flow agreement with Fortress, taking its three-year deployment capacity to $4.5bn without parking the loans on its own balance sheet.
Microsoft paid $6.5bn in Irish tax last year against $6.25bn to the US federal government, on $50.5bn of profit booked here.
PTSB shareholders approved the €1.6bn Bawag takeover by 91.3%, at €2.97 a share. The ECB decides next, with completion expected by Q1 2027.
Flutter named Dan Taylor as group chief executive from 1 October, replacing Peter Jackson after eight years, and cut full-year guidance on the same day.
TikTok is cutting 667 Dublin roles, close to 40% of its Irish workforce, with Trust and Safety worst hit. The first go on 21 August.
Boston Scientific filed a collective redundancy notice covering its 7,000-plus Irish staff, months after committing $75m to Galway. The number is not out yet.
📰 Have a story that needs to be told? Drop us a note here.
🗺️ FOUNDER DIRECTORY
Elaine Kelly - Klir
Elaine Kelly, founder of Canadian-based Klir
- Role: Co-Founder & COO, Klir
- Base: Toronto, Canada
- Focus: Compliance and operations software for water utilities
- Stage: Series A
Elaine Kelly and her co-founder Dave Lynch met as IT consultants at Accenture and spent two years together on a project for Ireland's EPA. When the government folded the country's water services into a single national utility in 2014, the pair were on the team working out how to consolidate the environmental data. That is where the idea landed: plenty of software did pieces of water compliance, nothing did the whole puzzle.
Klir is the answer, and they took it to where the customers were rather than waiting for the customers to find Ireland. Kelly moved to North America with a four-month-old son and a demo running off an iPad, and landed the Southern Nevada Water Authority as an early customer. Halifax Water, Aquarion and Santa Clarita Valley followed. We covered Klir's $17.5m growth round in January; this is the half of the founding story that never makes the funding announcement.
Three more Irish founders new on the map:
🇳🇱 Pádraic Flood | Aardaia | Wageningen. The plant geneticist is domesticating the aardaker, a forgotten high-protein tuber, into a nitrogen-fixing crop that yields more protein per hectare on less fertiliser.
🇦🇺 Michael Donegan | AusPlant | Perth. A first-class UL computer systems graduate, formerly at Toast in Boston, now building digital prestarts, defect tickets and asset tracking for construction and mining fleets.
🇦🇺 Jen Sharpe | Trinity Talent | Sydney. The Dublin Institute of Technology graduate led HR teams across sectors and countries for years before setting up her own human capital and executive search consultancy.
🍀 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
Patrick Collison on the question founders never ask: what if you succeed? Thirty minutes at Startup School on dropping out of MIT twice, and when to actually start.
Why data centres rely on this crucial technology. CEL Critical Power's Niall McFadden on the unglamorous kit behind the AI build-out, alongside Reuters' US power correspondent.
Medtronic led CoreMap's oversubscribed $37m Series C. Cardiac mapping for atrial fibrillation, from the company adding 85 jobs at a Galway software hub.
Why AI systems need to be robust, not just accurate. UL's Prof Martin Hayes on why average accuracy is worthless in a hospital, and what a "pi-shaped" graduate looks like.
Four Enterprise Ireland-backed legal tech startups. AML Manager, Bundledocs, Generait and TrialView, profiled by the Law Society for the firms still doing this on paper.
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