Every week we take a look at some of the most interesting B2B stories from the past week. This week our interest was piqued by some interesting agritech developments, the impact AI is having on our brains, and County Galway's new billing as the Wild Atlantic Space Coast of Ireland!
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Galway Space-Tech Firm Announces 125 New Jobs
With a grand vision to Build the Internet in Space, MBRYONICS - with the announcement of 125 new jobs - have taken one giant leap towards realizing this goal. Galwegian CEO, John Mackey has spoken of his pride in opening the company’s first volume production facility on the “Wild Atlantic Space Coast” of County Galway. A B2B company targeting aerospace and telecom companies, MBRYONICS’ optical transport and Coherent Photonic Optical (CPO) transceiver technology looks set to play a central role in the reshaping of internet infrastructure. The challenge now - which the Mackey sibling-led company is well set up to meet - is to turn the vision into reality.
Irish-led Cybersecurity Firm Secures $2.7m for Startup Miru
Miru, the startup co-founded by Irish cybersecurity veteran Eoghan Mckee, this week emerged from stealth mode to announce a successful $2.7 million pre-seed funding round. On a mission to build the investigative platform for the AI era, McKee is joined by similarly-experienced Quang Pham and David Pigott who can call on years of experience at the cutting edge of cybersecurity at companies like Uber, DocuSign, and the US government. The successful funding round means Miru will be bringing their product to market and doing so with a unique value proposition based on a new way of bringing dispersed data into a native graph - giving AI the context it needs to drive investigative success.
Career Break Critics Missing the Big Picture
SiliconRepublic.com this week had an interesting interview with Career Returners co-founder, Julianne Miles, MBE. Founded in 2014, Career Returners has made huge progress in the area of supporting returners - including helping some 4,000 people secure professional roles after a career break. However, as Miles explained to Silicon Republic, there is still much work to be done to achieve her goal of removing the career break penalty so favored by recruiters. Career Returners, to their credit, have touched on an important point - in a business landscape that is becoming increasingly AI-driven and, in many ways, increasingly homogeneous, it is the person returning after a career break who has the potential to bring a different and highly valuable perspective to a company.
Agritech Nofence Announces €30m Series B Funding
Norwegian agritech company Nofence this week announced it had secured €30m Series B Funding to expand their solution across Europe and into America. Their no fencing solution is quite literally reshaping farming for many Irish farmers. By fitting animals with GPS-enabled collars, farmers can virtually adjust grazing areas from their phones, increasing land efficiency and helping to protect sensitive habitats. At a time when farmers are under pressure to meet environmental obligations, Nofence are well-positioned to help farmers transition to more sustainable business practices.
Irish-led CalypsoAI to be Acquired for $180m
Led by two Irishmen, CEO, Donnchadh Casey and CTO, James White, CalypsoAI is to be acquired by global cybersecurity leader, F5. The acquisition marks a job well done for CEO Casey who assumed the role in August 2024 with the remit of guiding the company through the next phase of growth.
European IT Consultancy principal33 Launches Irish Operations
This week saw news that principal33 will employ up to 50 people by the end of the year with the launch of their Irish operations. CEO, Ignacio Santiago is bullish about the company’s potential saying “We are genuinely excited and confident that what is unfolding in Ireland is not only aligned with our expectations, but a clear confirmation that our strategy is the right one.” To give Santiago his due, the data is there to support this sentiment as IT contracting jobs are undoubtedly growing more common-place in the tech industry.
What is AI Doing to Us?
A timely article in The Conversation this week explores how AI affects the way we learn. Considering the influence AI already has in our day-to-day lives, it is no bad thing to take a step back and consider some of the implications of this ongoing AI-ification. Professor Brian Stone goes over some of the research showing both positive and negative effects of AI and the importance of identifying when AI risks becoming a brain drain and impairing critical thinking skills. We recently tackled some of these issues ourselves in a post on the future of B2B Marketing in the age of AI - finding that the critical thinking skills touched on in Professor Stone’s article along with creativity will be the key ways marketing professionals can maintain and demonstrate their value in the AI-powered future.
Laggards Getting Left Behind
A word of warning this week from Auxilion, the IT managed service providers, who released the findings of their survey which found that 33% of workers in Ireland are applying for jobs in more innovative companies. In a time of rapid change, the companies that fail to innovate will get left behind - and left behind in a number of ways - including personnel retention.
MFS is a boutique B2B Marketing Agency based in Ireland with a track record of creating and executing revenue-generating campaigns at companies ranging from rapid growth startups to F500s. In our weekly newsletter Forward Reads we bring you our own take on the top stories of the week that was covering topics such as startup news, Irish success stories, AI, strategy, and whatever else catches our attention.