Dublin cloud firm Skynet Labs raises €750,000 in first seed round

8 Jan 2013

Cloud software company Skynet Labs – which focuses on the global oil and gas exploration sector – has secured €750,000 in its first seed round. The investment includes some €500,000 from SOSventures and further funding of €250,000 from Enterprise Ireland.

The mobile and cloud computing company is in the vanguard of a new generation of technology companies serving the oil and gas exploration industry.

Oil and gas energy is proving more and more difficult to extract in deeper and tighter formations.

Skynet’s cloud software enables oil and gas drilling engineers to manage their calculations workflow in well control and planning.

“Skynet Labs is one of the new breed of companies focusing on changing and revolutionising big business with the latest cloud technologies and methods,” the company’s CEO Tim Duggan explained.

“We came to market only four months ago and were fortunate to gain traction extremely quickly. I am delighted that we were able to secure a deal with such a well-respected international firm like SOSventures and also the enthusiastic interest from oil majors we have met with.

“Striking this deal provides us with the right platform to ramp up our product and business development rapidly in serving two key markets, Texas and Norway. We are delighted to have an outstanding international board of advisers who come from oil and gas technology, treasury level financing, E&P drilling ops and oil IP rights.”  

Duggan explained that the company has also secured deals with two global oil producers with drilling activity to trial the software for their drilling teams.

“We are also working with drilling engineering contractor firms that contract to the likes of Trans Ocean, who own about 80pc of the world’s oil rigs,” he added.

Concept to reality

Skynet was one of the top 10 companies chosen to take part in the international Start-up Bootcamp 2012 accelerator programme.

It was during this process that SOSventures and Skynet labs were first introduced.

“Skynet Labs is exciting prospect for us,” SOSventures partner Bill Liao explained. “In a time when innovation and entrepreneurship is key to our future growth, we were impressed not only by their product offering but also at the pace that Tim and his team were able to bring this from concept to product development stage.

Skynet Labs and its technology team are based in The Digital Depot on Thomas Street in Dublin.

Disclosure: SOSventures is also an investor in Silicon Republic

Oil rig image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com