Almost €1 billion. That is the figure that defines Ireland’s artificial intelligence story right now — €691.3 million raised across 107 deals in 2025, followed by a further €256 million across 75 deals in 2026 to date, according to new research from PitchBook, the global private capital markets intelligence firm, published this morning ahead of the International AI Summit in Dublin on October 14th.
The numbers tell a nuanced story. Deal volumes and values are down year on year — a decline that PitchBook and Enterprise Ireland are framing not as a contraction but as a normalisation after a record-breaking 2025. Median deal values have fallen from €2.4 million to €1.6 million, but that still represents a significant step up from historic levels. The money flowing into Irish AI is settling into a more selective, more mature pattern — and that is arguably a sign of a sector growing up rather than running out of steam.
“PitchBook’s independent analysis shows the scale of investment now going into Irish AI companies, with almost €1 billion raised since the beginning of 2025,” said Jenny Melia, Chief Executive of Enterprise Ireland, whose organisation has participated in 392 Irish AI funding rounds since 2020, supporting nearly two-thirds of all Irish AI deals in 2026 to date. She described the investment as reflecting the “calibre and growing maturity” of the sector.
Where the Money Is Going
The profile of deals in 2026 reveals a clear pattern: late-stage companies are capturing the lion’s share of capital. In 2025, late-stage AI deals reached a record €380.5 million — 2.5 times the 2024 figure — and that trend has continued into 2026, with 18 late-stage deals securing €135.5 million and three venture-growth rounds attracting a further €61 million.
The Q2 2026 picture is particularly striking. KPMG’s Venture Pulse report found that €296 million was raised across 20 deals in the three months to end of June — up more than 150% in value terms from the same period in 2025. Three deals alone accounted for 63% of that total: Fonoa, the tax automation platform, raised $110 million; drone delivery company Manna raised $50 million; and fleet safety technology firm CameraMatics raised €49 million.
“The majority of fundraising this quarter has flowed to software businesses,” said Gavin Sheehan, Partner in Deal Advisory at KPMG Ireland. “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.”
The names on the round list explain where the record came from: Wayflyer’s €161.8 million fundraise and Tines’ €120.7 million Series C anchored 2025, while Fonoa’s €94.1 million Series C, Cloudsmith’s €61.5 million and CameraMatics’ €49 million lead 2026 — with January’s $60 million round into quantum computing company Equal1, led by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, one of the year’s landmark Irish deep-tech raises.
Where Ireland Stands in Europe
Ireland currently ranks ninth in Europe for AI venture capital deal count — but second on a per-capita basis. That per-capita ranking tells the more important story: relative to its population, Ireland is punching far above its weight in attracting global AI investment, sitting behind only one other European nation in that measure.
The Names Behind the Money
The investor list backing Irish AI companies reads like a who’s who of global technology investment — Accel, Kinnevik, Tiger Global, Tencent, Summit Partners, 83North, Endeavor Catalyst, EQT Life Sciences, ABB, Samsung and Yokogawa all feature among the international names supporting Irish companies in 2025 and 2026.
The Foreign Money Question
That international capital dominance does carry a note of caution. The Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA) raised the alarm last month over the influence of foreign funding into domestic companies, after contributions from abroad represented 82% of total investment. The question of whether Ireland is building globally competitive indigenous AI companies, or simply providing a launchpad for internationally-backed ventures, is one the sector has not yet fully resolved.
The concern has numbers attached. Venture capital funding into Irish SMEs fell 10% to €578.4 million in the first half of 2026, and IVCA chairperson Richard Watson said the 82% international share was “flashing red warning signals” about the country’s over-exposure to overseas investors. “Just two frontier AI companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, sucked up 43 per cent or $217 billion of global start-up funding in the first half,” he said — evidence of how quickly capital can be pulled toward the biggest names.
The Global Context
Ireland’s €1 billion milestone does not exist in isolation. Global venture capital investment in AI reached an all-time high of approximately $430 billion in the first half of 2026 alone — surpassing the $254 billion invested across the entire year of 2025, and more than four times the total from just three years ago, according to EY Ireland’s AI Investment Trends report. The global AI investment boom is accelerating at a pace that few predicted even twelve months ago.
The infrastructure layer beneath that venture money is growing just as fast. EY expects hyperscalers Amazon, Alphabet and Meta to spend between $490 billion and $520 billion on AI in 2026 alone, and more than $250 million of first-half investment landed in Irish AI companies across healthcare, quantum computing, space technology and AI infrastructure.
Ireland’s enterprise AI adoption rate has more than doubled between 2023 and 2025, reaching 20% of businesses — in line with the EU average but behind leaders Denmark (42%) and Finland (38%). Closing that adoption gap will be the defining domestic challenge for the sector over the next two years.
What Comes Next
The International AI Summit in Dublin on October 14th — for which this morning’s PitchBook data was timed to coincide — puts Ireland’s AI ambitions on the European stage at a significant moment. With the EU AI Act now in force, the AI Office now operational and regulatory frameworks reshaping how capital flows and how companies operate across the continent, Ireland’s position as a regulatory-friendly, talent-rich, English-speaking hub within the EU becomes more strategically valuable by the month.
The domestic scaffolding is being built in parallel. The Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Act 2026 established Oifig IS na hÉireann — the AI Office of Ireland — as the independent statutory body coordinating implementation of the EU AI Act here, operational since early August and acting as the single point of contact for the European Commission and Ireland’s sectoral regulators. Ireland carries that positioning into its presidency of the Council of the EU, which runs through the end of 2026, with the Dublin summit as its flagship AI moment. Few countries get to write the rules and host the conversation in the same year.
“Ireland already has or is actively building many of the capabilities required to benefit from the continued growth in global AI investment,” said Grit Young, EY Ireland Partner and Technology, Media and Telecoms Lead. “These include skilled talent, energy and digital infrastructure, a vibrant AI R&D sector, strong industry-academia collaboration and a growing AI start-up community.”
Almost €1 billion raised. Ninth in Europe on deal count, second on per capita. The International AI Summit on Wednesday. Ireland’s AI moment is not coming — it is already here.
The Bottom Line
Ireland has raised almost €1 billion in AI venture capital since the start of 2025 — second in Europe per head and ninth overall, and a market that PitchBook and Enterprise Ireland both read as maturing rather than slowing. The money is going to fewer, larger rounds, and it is coming overwhelmingly from abroad. The foundations are in place. What comes next is conversion.