From left: Sean Blanchfield, Dr Tilman Schaefer, Dorothy Creaven and Michael Cordner. Image: Tim Walsh
Founded last year, this AI start-up wants to unite the expanding AI agent ecosystem with its integration tech.
The AI bubble continues to expand, as more and more businesses pursue a piece of the action by deploying AI in their organisations. But what many businesses quickly realise is that it’s not as simple as they might think.
A recent report by PwC found that 98pc of Irish businesses have started using artificial intelligence, but only 6pc have deployed the technology at scale.
According to the report, 67pc of Irish business leaders are partially implementing or testing the technology in their organisations, while still feeling that the safe deployment of AI is complex, and needs planning and coordination.
As hesitation abounds when it comes to AI deployments and integrations, our Start-up of the Week hopes to make the process a bit easier.
Jentic is a Dublin-based AI start-up that aims to unite the expanding AI agent ecosystem by enabling developers and companies to connect their AI agents to other systems. An AI agent is a software program that uses AI to plan how to accomplish goals and tasks, and then performs the steps in that plan by connecting to other software systems.
CEO and co-founder Sean Blanchfield describes the start-up’s platform as a “centralised communication hub for AI agents”.
“We are building a communication middleware layer that allows developers and organisations to easily connect their AI agents to other systems, and centrally control and manage their communication and data access,” he explains. “We help developers take their agents from concept to prototype, simplifying the process of securely connecting them with tools and systems, and we help organisations take agents from prototype to production, with centralised management, monitoring and security.
“By addressing challenges in how AI agents interact with APIs and other systems, we aim to be the integration layer that unites the rapidly expanding ecosystem of AI agents.”
The team behind the tech
Blanchfield, who is a member of the Irish Government’s AI advisory council, is no stranger to the entrepreneurial world, having co-founded multiple start-ups in the past.
While studying as an undergraduate, he co-founded mobile messaging company Phorest, and he later dropped out of a computer science PhD to co-found Demonware, which developed a network middleware technology for video games like Call of Duty. Demonware would later be acquired by Activision Blizzard in 2007.
Following this he co-founded a venture studio as well as PageFair – which was acquired by Blockthrough in 2018.
Jentic is his latest venture, which he co-founded last year with SaaS and e-commerce expert Dorothy Creaven, serial founder and blockchain expert Michael Cordner and Dr Tilman Schaefer, an expert in distributed systems who was a founding engineer in Demonware.
“The team came together with a shared vision to address the challenges of deploying AI agents in real-world businesses, leveraging our complementary expertise in technology, operations and innovation to build a foundational platform for the next era of AI,” says Blanchfield.
Agent bonding
With automation becoming more common in business operations, Jentic is targeting the enterprise AI market, with the aim of providing the appropriate infrastructure to connect and manage AI agents.
As Blanchfield explains to SiliconRepublic.com, every major tech platform shift in the last 40 years has required a new type of integration layer to connect software components to each other as well as to the world.
“Likewise, AI agents need a new kind of integration layer, to help them find and securely connect to each other, to other software systems running in the business and to APIs across the internet,” he says.
“Jentic is building this integration layer, with a focus on reliability, security and access control, so that businesses can lean into the AI revolution and start deploying AI agents with confidence.”
Despite only being established last year and the challenges of joining a highly competitive market – Blanchfield says launching a new AI start-up is like “trying to shoot a moving target in a fog” – the start-up has had significant success to date.
At the start of 2025, Jentic announced that it had raised €4m in a pre-seed funding round led by Elkstone. With eyes set on the future, Blanchfield says this funding will allow the company to expand its team, accelerate product development and bring its AI integration platform to market.
“Our ultimate goal is to be the trusted platform that connects the future landscape of AI agents and other software systems together.”
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