Venture capital funding for Irish tech hits annual record of €1.5bn

2024’s cash haul, reported by the Irish Venture Capital Association for 2024, is up 9pc on the previous year. Funding rounds below €5m, however, fell in value.

Venture capital hit a record €1.5bn in Ireland in 2024, according to new industry figures.

An unprecedented €585m fourth quarter saw Irish tech, biotech and medical device firms attract a total of €1.48bn in cash from private investors during the last 12 months, according to the Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA) VenturePulse report, published in association with William Fry.

The haul was a 9pc rise on 2023, itself a record fundraising year.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) accounted for over €100m of the total VC investment into Irish firms last year.

But two blockbuster funding rounds in the final three months of 2024 helped push Irish tech into a record-breaking year.

The Dublin-headquartered medical device company, Fire1, raised €116m, while the Louth-based sea drone developer, XOcean raised €115m. Other notable deals in the fourth quarter included the Dublin travel software firm, Nuitée (€46m), the biotech AI company Nuritas (€42m) and the fintech firm, NomuPay (€35.9m).

Life sciences accounted for 37pc (€552.9m) of the total raised in 2024, followed by software at 13pc (€185m), envirotech at 11pc (€161.7m), fintech at 8pc (€119m) and data at 8pc (€115m).

217 deals were completed in 2024, similar to the previous year (216).

However, despite a number of big rounds proving that Irish firms are starting to compete in scale with international peers, lower-value fundraising activity fell over the same 12-month period.

Deals in the €3m to €5m range declined by 37pc (to €82m) for the year, and by 56pc (to €17.6m) for the fourth quarter in 2024.

Funding in the €1m to €3m category fell by 24pc to €105m for the year and by 63pc to €23.6m for the quarter.

And investments below €1m declined by 4pc to €28.9m for the year and by 19pc to €7m for the quarter. Seed funding, or first rounds raised by SMEs, decreased by 4pc annually to €127m and by 55pc to €17.9m in the quarter.

“Growth in the year and final quarter was driven by big investments which demonstrates that Ireland has the capacity to create and scale world class tech firms,” said Gerry Maguire, chairperson of the Irish Venture Capital Association.

But at the lower end, the ecosystem is “choppy”, he said/

“Deals right across all sizes below €5m fell during 2024 and in quarter four.”

Mr Maguire said that the recent impact of Chinese operator DeepSeek is likely to increase, not decrease, appetite by VC investors in the sector.

“The arrival of players such as DeepSeek has the potential to boost margins and decrease development costs for AI start-ups,” he said.

“We are potentially witnessing the democratisation and ease of participation by AI developers, in the same way that Software-as-a-Service or cloud computing transformed and disrupted the traditional software model. There is massive potential in AI applications across healthcare, climate, education and other sectors, and this will be boosted by lower costs of development which represents a major opportunity for Ireland.”

Sarah-Jane Larkin, director general, IVCA, said that current global economic and political turbulence, partly driven by the new administration in the US, means that the Government’s latest €250m Seed and Venture Capital Scheme for 2025 to 2029 “couldn’t come at a better time”, with applications for the first call of up to €100m to be submitted to Enterprise Ireland by the end of this week.

“In view of global headwinds, we should be ambitious and aiming to double this,” she said.

Reporting on:independent.ie