Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.
👋 Céad míle fáilte! The most-watched Irish product on the internet this week was not built in Dublin. It was brewed there.
On Monday, Stripe co-founder John Collison released a new Cheeky Pint with Mark Zuckerberg and Meta's Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang. Over two hours on Muse Wonder, Meta's new frontier model, and what it feels like to sign off a cheque for "like $100 billion, $200 billion" before you know the model works.
The internet watched about eight seconds of it. A clip of Zuckerberg sipping his Guinness has passed 11 million views, captioned "Mark Zuckerberg pretending to enjoy Guinness is my new favourite thing." He does not like it.
The best bit is at the very end of the transcript. The keg was his own gift. "That's a keg of Guinness that I brought you," he tells Collison, fresh back from Dublin, where Meta keeps its international headquarters, and a couple of months after buying a castle in Co Waterford. We first wrote about these two in 2025, when Collison joined Zuckerberg's inner circle.
Europe's daily tech show etn has since counted the Guinness every Cheeky Pint guest has finished, to the nearest sixth. Zuckerberg managed 1⅙. Elon Musk leads on three, and Intercom co-founder Des Traynor is joint third on 1⅚.
Fair play to him for trying. It is an acquired taste, and with a castle in Waterford, he has plenty of time to acquire it.
TL;DR:
✈️ Abroad: Lanas moves to buy New Zealand's indici, West Cork's Granite makes its third US acquisition, Glanua opens in Pennsylvania, and LendWell signs a second UK broker.
🏠 At home: OpenAI adds 200 more Dublin jobs, Tines hires 100, TensorX passes $5m in revenue, FUEL buys 53Six, and Irish AI's €950m since 2025.
👑 Founder Directory: Orla Shields ran a £650m London Olympics budget and now runs Kamma, the licensing check behind some of the UK's best-known letting agents.
💰 Investment tracker: Dubsof raises $6.5m, ArmadilloPay closes its seed, and LearnUpon lands a $50m facility.
🧠 Brain food: Ireland's Michelin stars, 46 years of Big Tech in Ireland, Europe's best venture quarter in four years, the corporation tax argument, and a Dunmanway hurler's New York scaffolding firm.
Enjoy ☕
LATEST UPDATES
News from abroad ✈️
🇳🇿 Dublin goes shopping in New Zealand: Lanas, the Dublin health tech group formed after Boston's TA Associates bought Clanwilliam, plans to buy indici, a New Zealand cloud patient record and practice management platform used by more than 250 healthcare organisations. The proposed deal is the first step in a NZ$150m, two-year push into the country. "New Zealand has a strong track record of embracing digital healthcare," said founder and CEO Howard Beggs. Irish software companies usually get bought. This one is doing the buying. Read more.
🇺🇸 West Cork buys a third American agency: Granite, the digital agency founded in West Cork in 2009, has bought branding and design agency Right Hat, its third US acquisition and its second this year. Right Hat adds Chicago and Washington DC to Granite's New York base. Co-founder and CEO Conor Buckley expects North America to bring in around half of global revenue by 2028. Terms were not disclosed. Plenty of Irish agencies serve American clients from Ireland. Granite is buying its way onto American soil. Read more.
🇺🇸 Loughrea lands in Pennsylvania: Glanua has opened its first US office in Radnor, Pennsylvania, starting with life sciences and food and beverage manufacturing, and plans a US team of more than 200 over time. The Galway company did €155m in revenue in 2025, expects to pass €200m this year, and has grown from 545 staff at the end of last year to more than 750. Group MD Karl Zimmerer called it "a major milestone for Glanua". That is a 38% jump in headcount before the American hiring starts. Read more.
🇬🇧 LendWell signs a second UK broker: Enterprise Ireland-backed mortgage tech company LendWell has agreed a multi-year deal with SPF Private Clients covering mortgage and protection advice, with a wider rollout planned for 2027. It follows a deployment earlier this year with Finance Solutions, the Howden-owned broker. "Digitising manual work isn't the same as removing it," said co-founder and CEO Jamie Lawless. Two named UK brokers in one year is how an Irish startup earns the right to a third. Read more.
At home 🏠
OpenAI is adding 200 more jobs at its Dublin EU headquarters on top of the 250 announced in July, plus an Applied AI Lab. It moves into the Tropical Fruit Warehouse in December.
Tines will create 100 jobs in Ireland over two years, more than half of them entry-level, and opens a new Dublin HQ later this year.
TensorX has passed $5m in revenue and 5,000 paying customers, with token volume up 171-fold since February, and made executive chairman Tim Grant its CEO.
FUEL, the Dublin experience group behind more than 650 events in 55 cities, has bought sports marketing agency 53Six, whose clients include Arsenal, Juventus and UEFA.
PitchBook says Irish AI companies have raised nearly €950m from VCs since 2025, €256m of it across 75 deals this year. Per head, only one European country does more AI deals.
📰 Have a story that needs to be told? Drop us a note here.
🗺️ FOUNDER DIRECTORY
Orla Shields - Kamma
Orla Shields, CEO and co-founder of Kamma
- Role: CEO & Co-founder, Kamma
- Base: London, UK
- Focus: Property licensing compliance for UK letting agents and landlords
- Stage: Series A
Orla Shields trained as a chartered accountant at Ernst & Young, then worked on risk and stress testing at the Central Bank of Ireland through the banking crisis. In London she delivered a £650m infrastructure budget for the 2012 Olympics, before working as a commercial director at digital agencies and media companies. She also finished 34th at the 2017 UCI World Amateur Cycling Championships.
Kamma checks letting portfolios against more than 370 council licensing schemes across the UK, flags when the rules change, and will handle the licence applications itself. Foxtons, Knight Frank, Chestertons and Purplebricks are on its customer list, and it is the official licensing partner of the National Residential Landlords Association.
Two more Irish founders new on the map:
🇺🇸 Cathal McGloin | ServisBOT | Lexington, Massachusetts. He sold his last company, FeedHenry, to Red Hat in 2014, and now builds AI agents that automate customer service for mortgage, banking and insurance firms.
🇳🇿 Eoin McLoughlin | nezo | Christchurch. The quantity surveyor co-founded nezo with Barry Lynch in 2022, giving architects live cost, carbon and weight figures inside Revit, Archicad and SketchUp.
🍀 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
THE INVESTMENT TRACKER
Who raised this week 💰
The Dubsof team
🇮🇪 Dubsof (Dublin) raised a $6.5m seed led by BlueYard Capital for AI software that slots into existing workflows. Its three 22-year-old founders dreamed it up in a San Francisco hacker house, then came home.
🇮🇪 ArmadilloPay (Dublin) closed an oversubscribed seed round, amount undisclosed, backed by Enterprise Ireland, and won an e-money licence from the Central Bank for its cross-border business payments platform.
🇮🇪 LearnUpon (Dublin) secured a $50m non-dilutive growth facility from Claret Capital Partners to fund agentic learning, acquisitions and international expansion. Waymo and Wayve are clients.
🧠 BRAIN FOOD
5 other things we are snacking on this week
Ireland has 18 one-star and five two-star Michelin restaurants. Intercom co-founder Des Traynor reckons Ómós in Abbeyleix will become the pick of the bunch, though he admits he is a tiny investor.
Apple came to Cork in 1980. OpenAI signed its Dublin lease this year. Wayflyer's Hugh Brennan walks through 46 years of Big Tech choosing Ireland, decade by decade. Timely, given the week OpenAI just had.
Europe just had its best venture quarter in four years. Crunchbase counts $25bn in Q3, up 77% on a year ago, led by the UK, Germany and France. Ireland does not get a mention.
Should Ireland share its corporation tax bonanza with the EU? Ciarán Hancock, Cliff Taylor and Naomi O'Leary on the French finance minister's suggestion, and why Simon Harris said no.
An intercounty hurler scores big in New York construction. Dunmanway's Jer McCarthy co-founded scaffolding firm Platform Solutions in 2018 and had over 100 staff and up to $30m in revenue within three years.
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.
💡 irish insights quick links:
Story idea? Send us a note
Founder Directory? Join today