Irish-founded CIM to bolster Cork base

Last week, CIM, which creates software to manage large buildings at their peak performance, reducing carbon footprint and costs, closed an AU$10.3m Series A funding round.

The round was led by Five V Capital alongside Carthona Capital and came as the company launched its international expansion plans into Asia and North America.

Tipperary-born Walsh told the Sunday Independent that CIM would deploy a “huge part” of the funding raised in Ireland. He added it had a great team based in Cork that does a lot of marketing and support work, with hopes to hire between 40 and 50 extra staff there.

“The business has been performing great in Ireland,” he said. “We have noticed a really solid demand for technology like ours. The business in Ireland was able to form very good relationships with the likes of CBRE and Knight Frank, those really large property managers.”

Walsh said he hoped the “next stage” for CIM would be a $70m to $80m funding round in the next 24 to 36 months.

“I don’t want to put a number on it and say I am trying to build a $5bn business,” he said.

“The numbers are just a scorecard. What I want to do is something that changes the lives of facility managers.”

Mum and daughter spot wine opening

The Wine Opener, an Irish family run business, has now notched up more than 5,000 customers since launching in 2021 with its trendy electronic wine opener.

Designed by mother-daughter Mary and Sophie Leahy, the company has launched a new website ahead of what it hopes will be a busy festive season.

A Dublin based pop-up store will launch in the run up to Christmas and they also plan to take their product to the US market this winter. The Leahys also plan to add a new addition to the product range with The Pop-Stop, designed to keep bottles of fizz bubbly for five days.

Web Summit new venture capital vehicle to command $40m

Paddy Cosgrave’s Web Summit is to launch a new venture capital vehicle that will command $40m in funding, according to reports.

The size of the fund was included in an article by US website Techcrunch, citing sources.

Techcrunch wrote that Web Summit Ventures will consist of two funds. One will be called Web Summit Ventures Seed, aimed at early-stage businesses and Series A rounds, and the other is Web Summit Ventures Growth, dedicated to scale-ups at the Series B stage and beyond.