Who is Eoghan McCabe? The Intercom founder behind Ireland’s biggest-ever tech sale
Eoghan McCabe speaks onstage during the "The Future Isn’t Autonomous, It’s Agentic" panel at the HumanX Conference San Franciso 2026 (Photo by Big Event Media/Getty Images for HumanX Conference)
The $3.6bn (€3.1bn) sale of Fin, formerly Intercom, to Salesforce marks the largest-ever deal involving an Irish-founded tech company. Throughout its 15-year history, the veteran Sales as a Software (Saas) business has evolved from an ambitious Temple Bar start-up to a darling of the tech industry, having achieved unicorn status seven years after its founding in 2011 with a more than $1bn valuation.
Intercom’s transformation into one of Ireland's largest private technology companies, culminating in its sale to the tech behemoth, has also renewed interest not only in the company but also its co-founder Eoghan McCabe, whose outspokenness and pivot to right-wing policies has secured his position alongside Zuckerberg and Musk in the breakaway Republican sect of the historically liberal Silicon Valley.
The reason we know so much about Dublin-born McCabe is because he tells us. Whether it's his personal blog or prolific social media presence, the Intercom co-founder is regularly criticising mass migration, lauding cryptocurrency and warning against the “testosterone” crisis threatening the global West.
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42-year-old McCabe described himself as a “pretty shy kid” who hated being told what to do. Writing on his blog, he looks back on quitting his first job cleaning hotel bar tables, which he lasted only a few weeks in before telling the manager everything he was doing wrong.
In a podcast from May 2024, he recalls his shyness setting him apart in the early days of Intercom from the popular Silicon Valley kids whom he tried to befriend.
“I felt vastly inferior to him,” he told the Grit Podcast. “I didn’t have their confidence. I definitely didn’t feel like I fit in.” This, he said, taught him his greatest lesson – that greatness is a quiet and lonely journey.
“Unfortunately, all those people who were ‘crushing it’ did not go on to create big companies. All the companies they were working with didn’t work out.”
After graduating with a computer science degree at Trinity College Dublin, McCabe founded the software company Intercom in 2011 alongside friends Des Traynor, Ciaran Lee and David Barrett, quickly establishing himself as the leader of the pack.
The gang then moved to San Francisco, where McCabe has lived for well over a decade.
By 2017, Intercom was operating four offices across San Francisco, Dublin, Chicago and London following the success of the customer messaging and communications platform, with locations in Sydney and Berlin yet to follow. By this time, the company was focusing on providing live chat, support and marketing tools to tens of thousands of businesses, employing around 450 people globally to assist its operations.
Less than a year later, the veteran Saas company achieved unicorn status by reaching a $1bn valuation, becoming one of the first Irish-founded private companies to do so.
While Intercom was thriving around that time, McCabe was suffering. In 2018, the co-founder was diagnosed with a neurological autoimmune disorder, writing that he fell “very, very sick” around June that year. He said his disorder has been “essentially healed” since cutting gluten from his diet.
Around a year later in May 2019, McCabe addressed staff members in Dublin after a report from technology news website “The Information” alleged that he made unwanted advances towards female staff between 2014 and 2015.
The media outlet conducted interviews with more than 30 current and former Intercom employees, reporting that staff described McCabe as “both brilliant and temperamental, with a tendency to cross boundaries with junior female employees.” McCabe later apologised for “poor judgement” that he said he demonstrated in the early years of the company.
“By 2019 I was falsely accused of some things I refuse to repeat,” Mr McCabe wrote on his blog, directing people to search for The Information report.
“[I] had no idea how to defend myself. The board freaked out and commissioned an extremely aggressive six-month investigation to show they certainly weren't at fault.”
“Then when they got the results they unanimously backed me as CEO. But by 2020 I was DONE. As in GET ME OUT OF HERE done,” Mr McCabe said.
“Sick as a dog and still burned to a crisp from the PR crisis and investigation. So it felt like the right time to cut and run and start adventures anew.”
At this point, McCabe resigned as CEO, with colleague Karen Peacock taking on the role. During his time away, Intercom began to struggle, resulting in widespread staff reductions and potentially devastating losses.
After taking time to wrap his head around what happened in 2019, McCabe returned to the top role at the end of 2022, around the same time OpenAI publicly launched ChatGPT. In the months and years following, Intercom pivoted significantly to artificial intelligence, repositioning itself as an AI-powered, cross-platform customer service tool.
Amidst Intercom’s AI shift, McCabe’s political opinions also began to pivot. In his blog, which was last updated in 2024, he describes himself as a centrist with “no political affiliation.” However, that same year, McCabe, who “disagrees with authoritarianism of all sorts”, donated $200,000 to campaigns supporting the re-election of US President Donald Trump.
The Federal Electoral Commission shows McCabe donated to the Trump 47 Committee and the Republican National Committee, with a smaller donation going to a campaign supporting Robert F Kennedy.
More recent filings also show McCabe donated smaller amounts in 2025 to Republican politician Thomas Earl Emmer from Minnesota and Republican candidate for Congress, Catalina Lauf in Florida, who was also a member of Trump’s first administration.
McCabe’s shift to the right in recent years is reflected in his social media posts, where, in addition to posting a photo of himself alongside Trump, lauding him for his policies on war, immigration and crypto, the Dublin-born entrepreneur has also spoken extensively about migration in Ireland.
Fun night at @DavidSacks’ fundraiser in SF :) I spoke with 6 people there. None identified as Republican. All voted or donated Democrat in the past. Now they’re backing this guy for his policies on war, immigration, crypto, and more. This election is a referendum on those issues pic.twitter.com/txqSuYTKoo
— Eoghan McCabe (@eoghan) June 7, 2024
“One of the great sorrows of my life has been watching my beautiful home country of Ireland be destroyed by it's own unfettered immigration policy,” McCabe, who has lived in the US since 2011, wrote on X in July 2025. “As of the end of last year there were 1.2m immigrants out of a total population of 5.38m."
In another post from last year, McCabe wrote that 2025 would be a “year of violence on the streets of Ireland, with “a lot of blood” being spilt from innocent men, women and children.
“This blood will be on the hands of those who’ve gleefully imported people who do not share our values,” McCabe added.
The Intercom co-founder has also warned against the "testosterone crisis" among men, citing studies he says show how decreasing levels of the hormone “impact how men show up in society.”
“From my perspective, the West needs to be ‘fixed’ because it has tipped too far towards collectivist values,” McCabe wrote.
On Monday, it was announced that the darling unicorn of Ireland and San Francisco, Intercom/Fin was acquired in a $3.6bn purchase by tech giant Salesforce.
The transaction will bring Fin's AI agent technology to Salesforce, which chief executive Marc Benioff said would complement its existing agent capabilities.
McCabe said little will "practically change" following the historic deal, confirming that he will remain CEO of the company. While his job title remains the same, time will tell how the man who does not like being told what to do adjusts to running a company that is no longer his.
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