The value of venture capital raised by Irish companies reached the highest first quarter total since 2016, according to financial markets data firm Refinitiv.
Irish companies raised €158m from seven deals in the first three months of this year.
This is a significant increase on the same period last year when firms raised €18m from eight deals.
Despite the potential impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on deal activity in the first three months of 2020, the figures from quarter one this year are still significantly up from the €83.6m raised in the last three months of 2020.
The biggest Irish deal was the €89m funding round into Mainstay Medical, followed by the €40m round in Flipdish.
Neurent Medical was the third largest venture capital deal worth €20.7m.
The most active Irish investor was Sosv, which invested €6.3m in nine deals. It was followed by Atlantic Bridge, which invested €19.5m in four deals, according to Refinitiv. Frontline Ventures were third with €7m invested into three deals.
Bernard Jackman, Ireland account manager for Refinitiv, said: “Irish venture capital investment has had a stellar start to 2021 continuing to grow on last quarter’s strong performance. With a rebounding economy, confident investors in Ireland, and indeed across Europe, are ploughing capital into start-ups like there is no tomorrow.”
The low interest rate environment and successful vaccine deployment “will also help to fuel investment appetite,” Mr Jackman added.
The UK was the most active European nation in raising funding, with €4bn from 206 deals. It was followed by German companies, raising €2.2bn from 165.
It comes as venture capital company Draper Esprit led a $30m (€24.5m) Series A funding round in tech firm Cervest.
Cervest claims to have developed the world’s first artificial intelligence-powered climate intelligence (CI) platform.
The company is providing open access to climate intelligence by offering everyone a free, standardised climate risk assessment. It will use the financing to move aggressively into the United States and European markets.
Dublin and London-listed Draper Esprit was supported in the round by current Cervest investors Astanor Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital and Future Positive Capital, as well as new investors Untitled, the venture fund of Magnus Rausing, and Time Ventures, the venture fund of Marc Benioff.
Cervest’s platform combines public and private data sources, machine learning, and statistical science to present a unified view of climate risk that it says has never been possible before.
EarthScan, the first product on the company’s platform, gives businesses and governments on-demand access to current, historical, and predictive views of how combined risks such as flooding, droughts, and extreme temperatures can impact the assets they own or manage.
Vinoth Jayakumar, partner at Draper Esprit, said: “Climate Tech has grabbed a lot of attention recently, with good reason. But solutions come from understanding the problem – Climate Intelligence is a new $40bn market category which seeks to provide us with answers.”
“Cervest's pioneering approach to quantifying risk, in a way that was never before possible, means we can better understand the economics of the problem and bring real-world market solutions to bear.”
Earlier this year Draper Esprit said its portfolio value will be “not less than” £955m (€1bn) when it reports its full-year results in June.
The company’s financial year-end is March 31 and at the end of its financial year 2020 its portfolio value was £703m.
The improvement is due to a “strong performance across the breadth of the portfolio”.
