Venture capital investment into Ireland rises 61%

Partner at KPMG Gavin Sheehan said the majority of the fundraising in the most recent quarter flowed to software businesses.

Venture capital investment into Ireland increased by 61% between April and June, compared to the first three months of the year, as driven by a couple of large-scale deals including tax software firm Fonoa and drone delivery company Manna.

The latest quarterly Venture Pulse report produced by KPMG shows that there were a total of 20 venture capital transactions involving an Irish company during the second quarter valued at a combined $342.2m (€296.4m). During the first quarter, there were 19 deals recorded with a combined value of $212.3m.

The largest deals of the quarter included $110m secured by Fonoa, the Dublin-based AI tax operating system for global businesses; $50m raised by drone delivery firm Manna, and $56m secured by CameraMatics, an AI-powered video telematics and fleet intelligence platform.

Partner at KPMG Gavin Sheehan said the majority of the fundraising in the most recent quarter flowed to software businesses.

“While a couple of more established start-ups have raised significant later stage funding, there are a variety of AI-native applications raising smaller seed rounds as they seek to develop solutions across niche verticals,” he said.

KPMG said the uptick in investment during the quarter continues to be driven in large part by international investors.

Across Europe, venture capital investment stood at $25.6bn across 1,636 deals. “While investment was slightly shy of the $26.0bn recorded in quarter one it remained well above historical averages and represented one of the region's strongest quarterly investment totals in several years,” KPMG said.

“Deal activity, however, fell from 2,433 in quarter one to 1,636 in quarter two, highlighting the continued preference of venture capital investors to focus their capital on a small number of high-quality transactions rather than on a broad spread of investments.” 

The global venture capital market saw $227.4bn in investment during the second quarter across 8,440 deals making it the second-best quarter on record despite continuing geopolitical tensions and macroeconomic uncertainties, according to KPMG.

“With six months remaining, annual global venture capital investment is already at a five-year high of $560.4bn, second only to the record $750.9bn seen in 2021,” KPMG said.

Global venture capital investors continue to place very large bets on AI companies with US -based Anthropic attracting the largest deal at $65bn followed by $12bn for US-based Prometheus, and $7.4bn for Chinese AI firm DeepSeek.

Global corporate venture capital investment also was on a record pace, accounting for $149.1bn in investment during the quarter.

On a regional basis, the Americas attracted $150.0bn across 3,999 deals, well above historical norms. Much of Asia’s increase was fuelled by a resurgence in venture capital investment in China, which attracted $35.1bn.