Every year, Enterprise Ireland publishes a number that quietly tells you more about the health of Irish innovation than almost any other: how many new companies it backed, and how much it put into them. For 2025, that number was 198 startups and more than €32 million in investment.

Break that down and it is roughly one new State-backed Irish startup for every working day of the year. These are not lifestyle businesses or side projects. They are companies the agency judged capable of reaching international markets, creating skilled jobs and growing into serious exporters.

The agency calls them the Class of 2025, and in May 2026 it brought many of them together at Start-Up Day at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin — the biggest date in the Irish startup calendar. Here is what that class looks like, where the money went, and why the numbers point in a positive direction for the next wave of Irish innovation.

Where the €32 Million Actually Went

The headline figure splits into two main pots. More than €23 million went into High Potential Start-Up Units, known across the ecosystem as HPSUs. These are the companies Enterprise Ireland expects to reach at least €1 million in sales and employ ten or more people within three years, with a clear plan to sell overseas.

Around €9.5 million went into pre-seed funding. This is earlier money, aimed at founders who are still proving their idea works and finding their first customers. It is the stage where many great ideas quietly die for lack of cash, so the size of this pot matters as much as the bigger cheques.

The HPSU route is backed by a dedicated Innovative HPSU Fund, which can invest up to €1.2 million in a single company. Crucially, that money usually comes alongside private investors. The State puts in its share, angel investors and venture capital firms put in theirs, and each side gains confidence from the other being at the table.

That model has become one of the most important features of the Irish startup scene. For a young company, an Enterprise Ireland investment is not only money in the bank. It is a stamp of approval that makes the next conversation with a private investor, a big customer or an overseas partner considerably easier.

It is worth remembering what that support looks like on the ground. An HPSU investment usually comes with a development adviser from Enterprise Ireland, access to the agency's overseas offices and introductions to potential customers in markets such as the UK, the US, Germany and the Nordics. For a founder trying to sell abroad for the first time, that network can be worth as much as the cheque itself.

Pre-seed support works in a similar way, just earlier. It helps founders build a first version of their product, test it with real users and put together the evidence they will need to raise a bigger round. Many of the companies that reach HPSU status in future years will have started exactly here.

A Strong Year for Women Founders

One of the most encouraging details in the 2025 figures is that 55 of the companies backed were founded or co-founded by women. That is more than a quarter of the whole class.

Enterprise Ireland has spent years working to widen the pool of people starting high-growth companies in Ireland, with dedicated calls for female entrepreneurs, targeted pre-seed funds and programmes aimed at getting more women into the founder seat. The Class of 2025 suggests that work is paying off in the numbers that matter.

This is more than a fairness point. Research from around the world has shown again and again that diverse founding teams spot different problems, build different products and reach different customers. An ecosystem that draws on the full talent of the population simply produces more good companies.

The women-founded firms in the 2025 class cover everything from health technology and software to food, sustainability and engineering. They are spread across the country too, which reflects another quiet trend: Irish innovation is no longer only a Dublin story.

The pipeline behind those 55 companies is getting stronger too. More women are coming through university research, accelerator programmes and senior roles in multinationals, and each successful female founder makes it more likely that others will follow. Visible role models matter, and the Class of 2025 adds dozens of new ones.

For investors, the lesson is practical. A startup scene that backs a wider range of founders is a scene with more opportunities to find the next breakout company, and Irish investors are increasingly treating that as simple good business.

Start-Up Day 2026 and a New Accelerator

Start-Up Day 2026 at the Aviva Stadium in May was the moment the Class of 2025 stepped into the spotlight. Founders pitched, investors circled and Government ministers turned up to talk about the next phase of Irish enterprise policy.

The biggest announcement of the day was a new €21 million National Accelerator Programme. It is designed to take over from the NDRC, the national accelerator that has helped hundreds of Irish startups get off the ground over the years and has been run by Dogpatch Labs since 2021, with its contract extended to the end of 2026.

The new programme is meant to give very early-stage founders a clear, well-funded path from idea to investment-ready company. For the next Class of 2026 and beyond, it should mean more structured support at exactly the point where many young companies struggle most.

Taken together, the investment figures and the new accelerator show an agency that is not standing still. It is building a pipeline: accelerator support at the very start, pre-seed money to prove the idea, HPSU investment to scale it, and ongoing help to break into export markets.

Start-Up Day is also a useful moment for the wider business community. Large Irish companies and multinationals attend to scout for partners and suppliers, and many of the conversations that start at the Aviva end in pilot projects, first contracts and, eventually, long-term customer relationships.

That matters because the hardest thing for most young companies is not building a product but finding the first paying customers willing to take a chance on it. Every introduction made on the day shortens that road.

What the Class of 2025 Tells Us About Irish Innovation

Look across the companies Enterprise Ireland backed in 2025 and a few clear themes emerge. Software and artificial intelligence feature heavily, as you would expect. But so do life sciences, medical devices, climate and energy technology, agri-food innovation and advanced manufacturing.

That spread matters. It shows Irish founders are building on the country's existing strengths — its pharma and medtech cluster, its big tech presence, its food sector and its growing research base — rather than chasing one fashionable trend. A broad base of startups is a more resilient base.

It also shows how closely Irish startups now connect to the wider innovation system. Many of the companies in the class came out of university research, others were started by people who learned their trade inside multinationals based here, and many are selling into global markets from their first year.

For anyone running a business in Ireland, the Class of 2025 is worth watching for a simple reason. These are the companies that will become tomorrow's suppliers, partners, customers and, in some cases, acquisition targets. The best of them will be household names in their sectors within a decade.

It is also a reminder that the Irish startup scene is not something that happens by accident. It is the result of years of steady public investment, a willing community of private investors and a growing number of founders prepared to take the leap. The 2025 figures show all three of those pieces working together.

Regional spread is another quiet strength. Companies in the class are based in Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, the midlands and the border counties as well as Dublin, supported by regional innovation hubs, local enterprise offices and technological universities that now play a much bigger part in the startup story than they did a decade ago.

And the numbers are not a one-off. Enterprise Ireland has backed well over a hundred startups every year for a long time, which means the Class of 2025 joins a steadily growing community of Irish founders who can mentor, invest in and hire from each other.

The Bottom Line

Enterprise Ireland backed 198 startups in 2025 and put more than €32 million into them, with over €23 million going to high-potential companies, around €9.5 million into pre-seed funding and 55 woman-founded firms in the mix. Add a new €21 million National Accelerator Programme announced at Start-Up Day 2026 and you have a startup engine that is not only running, but being upgraded. For Irish business, the message is clear: the next generation of homegrown innovators is already here, already funded and already selling to the world.