Dublin’s AI Landscape

As the founder of AI Ireland and the AI Awards, I’ve watched artificial intelligence transform everything from corporate boardrooms to century-old family businesses. What strikes me most in 2025 is how AI has shed its dystopian image to become something far more practical and human.

The “Terminator” myth is finally dying. Instead of replacing workers, AI is freeing them from tedious tasks, revealing hidden patterns in complex data, and giving small businesses tools that were once the exclusive domain of tech giants. Since ChatGPT sparked the generative AI revolution in 2022, the pace hasn’t just accelerated; it’s become genuinely transformative.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Dublin’s business community, where AI continues to create more jobs than it eliminates. PwC Ireland’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer confirms this upward trend, with new specialist roles emerging in data analytics, customer experience, and process automation. PayPal recently reinforced this momentum by adding 100 new AI and data science positions to its Dublin operations, while entrepreneurs of all ages are discovering that AI levels the playing field like never before.

Mark Kelly Captures a Photo with the AI Awards Audience

When Eighteen Meets Innovation

Take Liam Fuller, an eighteen-year-old who just secured €1.2 million in pre-seed funding for Source, his AI-powered retail automation startup. Frustrated by how much retail buying still relied on Excel spreadsheets and manual processes, Fuller built an agentic AI system that plugs into existing tools, Excel, email, ERP systems—to generate accurate forecasts and purchase orders with a single click.

The breakthrough came during a family visit to Australia. A casual pitch to Square Peg co-founder Paul Bassat led to funding within weeks, making Fuller the VC’s youngest-ever portfolio founder. He’s since left school to run Source full-time, proving that in 2025’s AI landscape, great ideas matter more than experience.

Old Dogs, New Tricks

Just down the street from Dublin’s tech quarter, Mark Lenehan runs a very different kind of operation. His family business, Lenehans Hardware on Capel Street, has been serving customers for 150 years. But Lenehan isn’t stuck in the past, he’s built a custom AI chatbot using OpenAI and DeepSeek that can recommend products, explain installation processes, and guide customers through everything from hanging pictures to unblocking toilets.

The results speak for themselves: thousands of customer queries handled, online sales boosted, and new staff trained more efficiently. Lenehan’s already exploring in-store virtual assistants and licensing opportunities, proof that AI innovation isn’t limited to startups.

The Giants Get Serious

Meanwhile, the tech majors are doubling down on Dublin. OpenAI’s local office has expanded significantly to support over 700,000 active ChatGPT users worldwide. The August 7th release of ChatGPT-5 marked a major leap forward: fewer factual errors, sophisticated coding capabilities (including full website and app creation), enhanced creative writing, and a refined safety approach that provides maximum helpfulness within ethical boundaries.

Financial services giant BNY Mellon has committed €8 million to a Dublin AI and data analytics R&D centre, creating 30 high-skilled positions. CeADAR, Ireland’s national AI centre, continues expanding its “test-before-invest” pilot programs, helping SMEs adopt AI with confidence rather than fear.

The Rising Stars

Source joins an impressive roster of Dublin AI success stories, including Brightflag (legal spend management), Tines (security automation), and NomuPay (cross-border payments). This blend of ambitious newcomers and scaling winners keeps Dublin’s ecosystem both diverse and resilient.

Dublin’s Global Position

Dublin is Ireland’s leading startup hub and a major European player. While it doesn’t consistently rank in the top ten across all European indexes, it remains a significant ecosystem that punches above its weight. Its strength comes from a combination of academic excellence, strong public-private collaboration, and a vibrant, experimental culture.

The AI Awards Trophy

What 2025 Teaches Us

From a teenager convincing global investors over coffee in Australia to a 150-year-old hardware store teaching customers plumbing repairs via chatbot, this year has demonstrated that Dublin’s AI story isn’t really about technology at all. It’s about human creativity, persistence, and the willingness to experiment.

These stories—and many others—will take centre stage at the 2025 AI Awards on November 18th at the Marker Hotel, celebrating another remarkable year of innovation in Ireland’s capital

Mark Kelly

Mark Kelly is an AI author, Founder of AI Ireland, AI Awards, and CCO of Alldus. A prominent influencer in AI and Automation.

You might also like...

UCD logo.

study

NovaUCD: Cool Ideas, Hot Tech

It’s an economic truth, universally acknowledged, that innovation is at the core of most successful businesses. Being innovative, however, is easier said than done. That’s why incubation centres are so necessary. Ireland proudly boasts nine university incubation centres, six university bio incubation centres and 15 Institute of Technology incubation centres. And they all contribute to making Dublin one of the world’s most exciting locations for both research and development – and in which to

Colum Twomey stands on stage with a mic at zendesk in dublin

invest

Zendesk in Dublin

Zendesk is a SAAS company that specialises in helping other companies with their customer care operations. It was founded in Copenhagen in 2007 and has grown massively since then. With four core products and over 170,000 customers worldwide, it has come a long way. Zendesk’s startup success story “The initial concept was making life easier for customer support engineers,” says Colum Twomey, Vice President of Product Development at Zendesk and head of its Irish office. “We developed a customer support platform, a software as a service product, and that’s where we came from. Since then, we’ve developed more products and addressed a broader marke

work

How Dublin Works: The Guinness Enterprise Centre

The Guinness Enterprise Centre, on Taylor’s Lane in the heart of Dublin’s Liberties, is managed by Dublin Business Innovation Centre and has been named the no.1 university associated business incubation centre in the world. In the first of two articles about the GEC, Dublin.ie talks to Eamonn Sayers, the centre’s manager since 2011. Dublin.ie: I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve got an idea. What can the GEC do for me here? Eamonn Sayers: The first step here is that we’ll try and put you in front of an entrepreneur who’s in the same industry. We’ll say have a chat with this person, see what they’re thinking. If you’ve identified your target market, again we’ll say we know someone here who’s in the same market and they’ll have a coffee with you too. Dublin.ie: Then what happens? Eamonn Sayers: Our role here is to help your company grow and scale. We help to make it become better and we help to make you a better entrepreneur. We create an environment and a community and a sense of belonging that makes entrepreneurs very comfortable, makes them enjoy the fact that this is their office, this is their workplace, so that both the entrepreneur and their teams are in the best place to grow their businesses.