Investors hear Siren call for $3.7m

Siren, an Ireland-based semantic data investigation technology spinout of NUI Galway, raised €3m ($3.7m) in seed funding today from a round led by the University Bridge Fund.

The University Bridge Fund was launched in 2016 through a partnership of University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin.

The vehicle is managed by growth equity fund Atlantic Bridge and investors also include the EU-owned European Investment Fund, state-owned enterprise support agency Enterprise Ireland, and financial services firms Allied Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland.

Siren’s semantic data monitoring technology keeps track of large data flows in real time, assessing links between different data sets to make the information readily available via search engine, dashboard analytics, graphs and live alerts.

The service was initially designed for mission-critical usage by security and law enforcement clients, however Siren will use the seed funding to add features that target the financial and life science sectors. Gerry Maguire, general partner of Atlantic Bridge, has joined the board.

Siren was founded by Giovanni Tummarello, who led research into data-intensive infrastructure at NUI Galway from 2007 to 2014.

Siren has also appointed a new chief executive, John Randles, who once led PolarLake, an enterprise data management software developer acquired by media group Bloomberg in 2012.

Seed fund Growing Capital and VC firm Frontline Ventures have both backed Siren previously, though further details could not be ascertained.

Tummarello said: “Our initial focus has been on working with national security services and police, where the mission-critical investigation of data is often done under intense time pressure.

“These capabilities have not previously been readily accessible in other sectors but we are now working with some of the largest financial and life sciences organisations to enable cross-dataset real-time investigation.”