Jentic, an artificial intelligence startup building the integration layer for AI, has announced it has raised €4 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Elkstone with additional participation from Sure Valley Ventures, TechOperators, and Shuttle. Many notable technology founders and leaders also joined the round as angel investors. The funding will be used to expand the team, accelerate product development, and bring an integration layer for AI to market.
Founded in late 2024, Jentic is a communication middleware layer for AI agents, which enables developers and organisations to easily hook their AI agents up to other systems, and manage and control their communication. It aims to be the platform that unites the expanding ecosystem of AI agents, from those offered by tech giants to bespoke agents created by in-house teams. Over the past few years, the AI sector has experienced unprecedented growth, driven by rapid innovation and a surge in investment.
An AI agent is a software program that uses AI to plan how to accomplish goals and tasks, and performs the steps in that plan by connecting to other software systems. An agent is like a “self-driving” computer program, which has its goal set by a human user, but performs all the necessary actions itself. Jentic is focusing on the connection layer between agents and all other software, increasing agent capability, maximising reliability and helping organisations monitor and manage large-scale AI deployments.
Jentic is founded by an experienced team of tech entrepreneurs, including CEO Sean Blanchfield, former co-founder of PageFair (acquired by Blockthrough) and DemonWare (acquired by Activision Blizzard), COO Dorothy Creaven, former Managing Director at Rent The Runway and co-founder of Element Wave, Michael Cordner, co-founder of Mindconnex, and Dr. Tilman Schaefer, a founding team member at DemonWare.
“We’re building critical infrastructure to enable developers to easily and securely hook their AI systems up to the world’s APIs,”said Sean Blanchfield, co-founder and CEO of Jentic. “This is the future of automation, and it needs a new kind of integration layer to manage the unique complexity, reliability and security issues that arise when AI becomes highly connected. We have a strong history of building category-leading middleware, and this funding will allow us to quickly expand our world-class team, match the tremendous pace of AI development, and deliver a platform that empowers developers and organisations to deploy sophisticated AI with confidence.”
For developers, Jentic streamlines API integration for AI agents, automatically matching them with optimal tools as they execute tasks. For executives, it provides centralised oversight of agent operations across the organisation, enabling monitoring, security management, and access control.
“At Elkstone, we are committed to backing ground-breaking startups capable of transforming industries,” said Niall McEvoy, Head of Venture at Elkstone. “Jentic’s clear vision to establish a universal AI integration layer aligns perfectly with our mission to drive technological innovation. Backing experienced serial founders with a clear global market opportunity underpins why Elkstone is leading this funding round, and we are enthusiastic to support Jentic’s growth.”
Several experienced tech leaders sit on Jentic’s board of advisors including Steven Collins (CTO of Unity, former CTO of King, co-founder of Havok and Swrve), Patricia Scanlon (Ireland’s AI Ambassador and founder/former CEO of Soapbox Labs, acquired in 2023 by Curriculum Associates), Colm Long (former VP of Global Operations at Facebook and Director of Operations at Google, previously COO at Tines), Fergal Reid (VP of AI at Intercom) and Mark Cummins (former founder/CEO of Pointy and Plink, which were respectively acquired in 2010 and 2020 by Google).
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