As AI shows no signs of slowing down, we took a closer look at some of the start-ups making hay while the tech sun shines.
Everyone loves an easy tagline when it comes to pitching. For start-ups, this can often be taking a common descriptor and applying it to their USP. For example, Dublin-based Imvizar has been described as the Netflix for augmented reality, while Belfast-founded GoPlugable wants to be the Airbnb of EV charging.
But now, the cool new thing is to become the ChatGPT of something. Artificial intelligence (AI) is far from a new concept and even generative AI (GenAI) wasn’t only born when OpenAI’s chatbot went mainstream at the end of 2022. But the popularity of the model skyrocketed the technology and saw competitors sprout up quicker than daisies.
And while OpenAI is facing its own Big Tech-style struggles, its effect on the industry can’t be denied as successors such as Anthropic and Mistral AI have all seen huge surges in investment in the last two years.
And as the tide continues to rise, start-ups are quick to ride the wave, creating their own success while the sun shines. While far from an exhaustive list, we took a look at some of the up-and-comers within the AI start-up space, both in Ireland and further afield.
Bioptimus
French-based start-up Bioptimus was founded just last year by Dr Rodolphe Jenatton, Dr Zelda Mariet, Dr Felipe Llinares, David Cahané, Dr Eric Durand and CEO Dr Jean-Philippe Vert.
Self-dubbed the “ChatGPT for biology”, the company wants to create the world’s first-ever universal AI foundation model that connects biological data at different scales, ranging from molecules to cells, tissues and even entire organisms.
At the beginning of this year, the Parisian start-up raised $41m, having launched its AI foundation model for pathology last July.
CergenX
University College Cork spin-out CergenX was founded by Jason Mowles, Sean Griffin and Prof Geraldine Boylan in 2021.
The company specialises in AI solutions for neonatal brain monitoring and its Wave device aims to enable hospitals to conduct “expert-level” EEG (electroencephalogram) assessments without the need for specialist resources.
In 2023, CergenX was awarded €6.7m from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment’s Disruptive Technology Innovation Fund to develop the device and earlier this year, it received the Breakthrough Device Designation from the US Food and Drug Administration.
Databricks
Founded more than 10 years ago, Databricks is one of the older entries on the list but has been capitalising on the surge in AI interest.
The US-based company provides a data intelligence platform designed to make it easier for organisations to use data machine learning, analytics and AI applications.
In January of this year, it closed a Series J funding round of $15bn, with Meta joining as a new strategic investor. This latest round puts the company’s valuation at $62bn.
Jentic
Dublin AI start-up Jentic was founded in 2024 by Sean Blanchfield, Dr Tilman Schaefer, Dorothy Creaven and Michael Cordner.
The company aims to unite the expanding AI agent ecosystem by enabling developers and companies to connect their AI agents to other systems.
At the start of 2025, Jentic announced that it had raised €4m in a pre-seed funding round which will be used to expand its team, accelerate product development and bring its AI integration platform to market.
Latent Labs
Co-headquartered in both London and San Francisco, Latent Labs is building GenAI models to accelerate drug discovery and research.
The start-up was founded in 2023 by Dr Simon Kohl, a former co-lead at Google DeepMind’s protein design team as well as a senior research scientist on DeepMind’s AlphaFold2 – a Nobel prize winning project.
Latent Labs emerged from stealth mode earlier this month with $50m in total funding and aims to help researchers to computationally create new therapeutic molecules, such as antibodies or enzymes, which could help on the road to personalised medicines.
Oasys Now
Dutch medtech start-up Oasys Now was founded in 2021 by former bioinformatics researcher Nima Salami and DNA and precision medicine expert Sara Okhuijsen.
The company has developed an AI-powered clinical trial patient identification and recruitment platform, and the founders hope to “enable every person to leverage their unique health data to prevent or heal disease”.
Oasys Now won last year’s Slush 100 competition, taking home a €1m equity investment from two prominent early-stage venture funds. Within a month of its victory, the Netherlands-based start-up scored a partnership with Progress Clinical Research.
Protex AI
Limerick company Protex AI was founded in 2021 by CEO Dan Hobbs and CTO Ciarán O’Mara, who first met at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition when they were both 12 years old.
The workplace safety start-up provides an AI-powered platform that plugs into CCTV devices and uses computer vision to capture unsafe events autonomously.
In 2022, the company raised $18m to expand its tech offerings across Europe and North America and earlier this month, it raised a further $36m to continue its US expansion.
Sereact
Founded by CEO Ralf Gulde and CTO Marc Tuscher in 2021, Sereact wants to democratise AI robotics.
The Germany-based company uses AI software to enable robots to ‘perceive’ their environment to perform a wide range of physical tasks.
In 2023, Sereact raised $5m in seed funding to develop its advanced robotics solutions and earlier this year, secured €25m in a Series A funding round which will go towards additional AI robotic platforms, including mobile robots and humanoids.
Synthesia
London-based Synthesia was established in 2017 by AI researchers Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild, Matthias Niessner and Lourdes Agapito.
The start-up specialises in using GenAI to create synthetic video content that can be used in a variety of ways, such as to build avatar-based videos from text documents for sales and marketing.
At the start of 2025, Synthesia saw its valuation double to $2.1bn after securing $180m in funding. And this week, it was one of two companies to benefit from a £500m UK Innovation Long-Term Asset Fund.
Zerve
Another Limerick-based start-up worth watching is Zerve, which was established in 2021 by Phily Hayes, Jason Hillary and Greg Michaelson.
The deep-tech company provides a coding platform tailored for data science and AI development that allows teams to collaborate and share outputs more easily.
In November 2023, Zerve raised $3.8m in a pre-seed fund led by Elkstone to build its product and less than a year later, it raised a further $7.6m in a seed round led by Paladin Capital Group.
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