Irish AI start-up Jentic raises €4m in pre-seed funding

Jentic is a communication middleware layer for AI agents, enabling developers and organisations to hook their AI agents up to other systems.

Dublin-based AI startup Jentic has announced it raised €4m in a pre-seed funding round led by Elkstone, an Irish investment firm specialising in private markets. There was additional participation from groups such as Sure Valley Ventures, TechOperators and Shuttle, as well as a number of angel investors.

Founded in 2024 by Sean Blanchfield, Dorothy Creaven, Michael Cordner and Dr Tilman Schaefer, Jentic aims to unite the expanding AI agent ecosystem by enabling developers and companies to connect their AI agents to other systems, for the purpose of monitoring and managing large-scale AI deployments. 

Jentic’s team includes a number of veteran tech entrepreneurs, for example, CEO Sean Blanchfield, the former co-founder of PageFair and DemonWare, COO Dorothy Creaven, who is the former managing director at Rent The Runway and co-founder of Element Wave, Michael Cordner, the co-founder of Mindconnex and Dr Tilman Schaefer, also a founding team member at DemonWare.

“We’re building critical infrastructure to enable developers to easily and securely hook their AI systems up to the world’s APIs,” said Sean Blanchfield, co-founder and CEO of Jentic. “This is the future of automation and it needs a new kind of integration layer to manage the unique complexity, reliability and security issues that arise when AI becomes highly connected.

“We have a strong history of building category-leading middleware and this funding will allow us to quickly expand our world-class team, match the tremendous pace of AI development, and deliver a platform that empowers developers and organisations to deploy sophisticated AI with confidence.”

Niall McEvoy, the head of venture at Elkstone also welcomed the news of the investment, stating, “we are committed to backing ground-breaking startups capable of transforming industries. Jentic’s clear vision to establish a universal AI integration layer aligns perfectly with our mission to drive technological innovation. 

“Backing experienced serial founders with a clear global market opportunity underpins why Elkstone is leading this funding round, and we are enthusiastic to support Jentic’s growth.”

Elkstone also funded a number of investment rounds throughout 2024, for example healthcare management platform Wellola and gaming technology start-up Jamango.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news. 

Related Content

Google details how long Pixel batteries should last in new support doc

Trump announces $20B plan to build new data centers in the US

FTC accuses gig work app Handy of misleading ads and opaque fees for workers

Leave a Comment