Thanks to low corporation tax and government incentives, Dublin has hosted the European Headquarters of many large US technology companies--Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Microsoft all have offices in the city's Silicon Docks. "The big US companies operated independently of the startup world for many years," explains Will Prendergast, partner at Frontline Ventures. "But in the last five years, US technology companies have been building product and engineering functions here, and that talent is starting to spill out, driving startup creation." Government support via Enterprise Ireland's Pre-Seed Start Fund, designed to accelerate early stage startups, and hubs such as Dogpatch Labs are supporting this wave of new talent. "Ireland does have a capital issue," says employee benefits startup Kota co-founder Luke Mackey.

Research-led Cork start-up CergenX is putting a vast databank of baby brainwaves to good work using the AI that underpins tech like Siri and Alexa. According to Jason Mowles, around five in every 1,000 newborn babies have some form of brain abnormality at birth, and many of these go undetected. "It is simply not possible to test all newborns," said Mowles. Research indicates that early detection of brain injury would improve long-term outcomes, as the sooner treatments or interventions are introduced, the better. And research is at the core of Mowles' start-up, CergenX, which sets out to make testing of all newborns not only possible, but effective at evaluating brain health as this early stage of life. Driving the research behind the start-up is co-founder Geraldine Boylan, professor of neonatal physiology at University College Cork (UCC) and co-founder and director of the Infant research centre.

Covid-19 has focused businesses more and more on their supply chains, said fast-emerging Cork business Kwayga's CEO Martin Fitzgerald. "Right now, businesses are seeking new solutions to help buyers diversify their suppliers, and suppliers to diversify their markets." Kwayga is a B2B matching platform for buyers and suppliers in the food sector designed around trust and security. Using the platform buyers and suppliers discover, verify, match, connect, communicate in any language and trade. "Kwayga focuses on democratising international trade for mid-sized businesses by putting the right buyers with the right suppliers at the right time. Trust is the key component. We use AI to verify company profiles, we protect buyers from unsolicited approaches by giving them strong privacy controls, and we make a promise to suppliers that the deals posted on our platform are from real verified buyers."

A Dublin company offering online media courses plans to raise €2.5 million this year to roll out a new artificial intelligence (AI) invigilation platform for remote exams. GoCreate has developed the'Claire' platform in conjunction with the University of West London, an existing partner with whom it runs accredited media courses online. The move has opened up new opportunities for GoCreate, which now plans to raise funding to market the AI platform to colleges and universities in Ireland, Britain and other markets. "We really want to get the word out there, because this is a new area for us, but it came about in response to an immediate problem faced by one of our partners," Susan Hickey, co-founder at GoCreate, said. The company already offers two online degree courses in creative media and sound production online at Gocreateacademy.com, and three diplomas in audio storytelling, pop vocals and vlogging.

Altada has closed a €1.3 million investment round, bringing total funding in the Cork-based AI start-up to €4 million. It has secured the investment from Enterprise Ireland, the state agency, and Rocktop Partners, an alternative investment manager headquartered in the US. Rocktop is one of 15 clients using Altada's technology, Allan Beechinor, the company's chief executive, said. Altada uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help clients such as Rocktop, which handle high volumes of information, to manage due diligence and regulatory compliance. "Rocktop is involved in acquiring large pools of performing or non-performing residential mortgage loans. They would use us to identify collateral deficiencies and compliance issues within that portfolio," Beechinor said.

Founded in 2015 by Bart Lehane, Ciaran Tobin and Shane Lynn, EdgeTier recently raised €1.5m in a funding round led by Episode 1, ACT Venture Capital and Enterprise Ireland. The Dublin start-up delivers high-quality analytics products and services to clients in the areas of customer service, customer simulation, and analytics services. The company also recently won Enterprise Ireland's Digital Disruptor award. "EdgeTier builds products to make customer contact centres more intelligent, more efficient, and more effective," explained CEO Shane Lynn. "EdgeTier uses artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to enable contact centres to provide higher-quality customer experience at incredible levels of efficiency."

Technology developed by Kerry-based Dairymaster, which uses AI to optimise milking, was named winner of an Enterprise Ireland innovation award. Ahead of the National Ploughing Championships today (17 September), the 2019 Enterprise Ireland Innovation Arena Awards were announced. The pre-event is designed to highlight some of the latest agritech and agri-engineering projects underway in the country. The overall winner was the Mission Control system developed by Kerry-based Dairymaster, which has introduced artificial intelligence (AI) to rotary milking and includes an advanced cow recognition system called'CowNow'. The OptiCruise technology incorporated into the design adjusts the speed of milking so that milking time is optimised.

EdgeTier, an Irish start-up using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve customer service, has raised €1.5 million in a new funding round. The investment is to be used to to increase research and development efforts in its AI assistant known as Arthur, and for further international expansion. Arthur uses AI, analytics and automation to guide call centre staff through complex customer queries, resulting in speedier and more accurate responses. Founded in 2015 by Shane Lynn, Bert Lehane and Ciarán Tobin, the company recently edged out rival start-ups Webio, Data Chemist, VRAI and UrbanFox to win Enterprise Ireland's'digital disruptor' award. Last year the company also won'best start-up' at AI Ireland's awards and'best use of data science in a start-up' at the DatSci awards.

AI set to take the strain in the search for new talent. The volume of candidates for jobs is increasing dramatically as employees often only stay with companies for short periods; they seek new opportunities to develop their skills and careers, with the aim of moving onwards and upwards quickly. The result is that the revolving door of vacancies and recruitment is speeding up. Recruiters' time is increasingly taken up with a process that seems never ending. According to a 2018 report from recruitment specialists Hays Ireland, 46 per cent of new employees have left a job within the first 12 months.

Dublin-based software firm Artomatix has closed a €2.1 million seed round with investors that include Enterprise Ireland. Artomatix, which employs 17 people, was founded in March 2014 by Dr Eric Risser, Neal O'Gorman and Bart Kiss. It has developed artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help automate 3D art creation for game design. The company's technology, known as Example Based Content Creation, relies on Dr Risser's expertise in machine learning, computer vision and graphics developed over 10 years of research. The technology gives 3D artists the ability to speed up their workflow thanks to algorithms that can generate thousands of images based on the initial design and parameters that an artist provides.