Dublin AI start-up Dubsof raises €5.5m to double workforce

Dublin artificial intelligence start-up Dubsof plans to double the size of its workforce over the next 12 months after raising $6.5m (€5.5m).

The company will hire engineers, designers and commercial staff at its Merrion Square office as it rolls out its platform.

Currently in beta with a group of selected clients, the Dubsof platform generates bespoke software for companies to run their business through.

One client, Stanley Asphalt, moved its fleet, scheduling, compliance and office work to a live system on Dubsof, so its crews can see what's coming without ringing anyone.

The company was founded by 22-year-olds Aidan McNeill (CEO), George O'Leary (CCO) and Bastien Saidi (CTO) who met through the Patch accelerator and came up with the idea for Dubsof at a San Francisco hacker house last year before returning to Ireland.

"Dubsof exists to build a better economy, to solve coordination between people and companies," said O'Neill. "Most working time goes on admin and coordination, and we want people to spend it on the work only they do best.”

Investors in the round include BlueYard, Backed, Cocoa and Project Europe, the fund backed by more than 200 of Europe's leading founders.

Angel investors include David Singleton , former CTO of Stripe; Matt Fitzpatrick , CEO of Invisible Technologies and former global head of QuantumBlack Labs at McKinsey; Dylan Collins , founder of Demonware and SuperAwesome; and Jack Cantillon , Mark Maxwell and Chris Mairs .

Commenting on the funding, McNeill added: "We could have stayed in San Francisco. We came home because the engineering talent in Ireland is as good as anywhere in the world, and a lot of it is untapped.

"This funding means we can double our team in Dublin and bring Dubsof to more of the businesses asking for it."

Dubsof will recruit core software engineers to build systems, full-stack software engineers to ship features end to end, infrastructure software engineers to build and run the platform, deploys and tooling, product designers, and techops engineers.

“The businesses we work with keep the country running, from civil engineering to industrial automation and haulage, and none of them have ever had software built around how they actually work," said O'Leary.

Dubsof has raised €5.5m from investors.

"We are already at the limit of what we can take on, and this funding lets us bring Dubsof to the businesses waiting for it.”

Saidi said: "A business can’t run on software that’s right most of the time. Making AI-built systems reliable means rethinking the foundations, not waiting for a better model, and we want the best engineers in Europe doing it with us in Dublin."

Photo: The Dubsof team. (Pic: supplied)