10 automation start-ups that want you to work smarter, not harder

Siliconrepublic.com has put together a list of automation start-ups you should watch out for.

Most businesses automate – albeit some more than others. Regardless, automating tasks is how businesses maximise their returns while investing the saved time and resources into other, more vital tasks.

Automation as a service has boomed in recent years, especially since the advent of generative artificial intelligence. This has opened up newer ways for companies to optimise their workflows and remove bottlenecks.

Siliconrepublic.com has put together a list of start-ups working in the automation sector, providing their clients with novel ways to improve their business practices.

Augmetec

This UK-based legal start-up offers its customers a SaaS platform with AI and automation tools to conduct internal and regulatory investigations and tackle issues of ethics and compliance.

Founded in 2022, Augmetec is headquartered in London and has teams spread across the UK, Germany, Portugal and the US. The start-up’s co-founder Kritin Sundaram said that they want to ease the “overwhelming burden” on workers in the legal sector who handle complex and multifaceted investigations.

Earlier this year, Augmetec raised £2m in a seed funding round led by Fuel Ventures to facilitate its growth. Dealroom.co values the three-year-old start-up at up to $16m.

Axe

Axe is an Irish start-up that builds autonomous AI agents capable of handling tasks such as order entry, quoting, scheduling and phone calls. According to the company, automation saves workers more than four hours daily.

Founded in 2024 by James McElroy and Dan Quill, Axe aims to make complex supply chain processes simple and efficient using AI and “intuitive workflows”.

Just this month, the Dublin-based start-up raised €1.5m in a pre-seed round. Axe, which also operates out of London, shared plans to open its first US office later this year.

Eiratech

This Dublin-based start-up develops “user-friendly” robotics and software, bringing its automated workflows to fulfilment warehouses and manufacturing environments. Eiratech creates a “complete goods-to-person robotics automation platform”, it claims, including e-fulfilment, materials handling, kitting and retail.

In addition to offering a number of warehouse robots and its proprietary software, the start-up has a dashboard which allows customers access to key metrics.

Eiratech, which was founded in 2014 by Alexey Tabolkin, opened its first UK office in 2021.

Fonoa

Irish start-up Fonoa helps enterprise companies automate tasks to ensure global tax compliance. It was founded by three Uber alumni, Davor Tremac, Filip Sturman and Ivan Ivankovic, who now provide their services to large companies, including Uber, Dell, Netflix and Zoom.

Late last year, the Fonoa acquired Global Indirect Tax Compliance, a PricewaterhouseCoopers product, which manages partial exemptions for companies doing business across multiple jurisdictions.

Fonoa raised $60m in 2022, a massive funding round which came just a few months after the start-up raised $25m to grow its team and expand internationally.

Invert Robotics

Headquartered in Ireland, Invert Robotics, helps its clients – which includes some of the world’s biggest food production, chemicals, pharmaceutical, aerospace and energy companies – make inspecting and maintaining potentially hazardous and toxic industrial assets more efficient and safe.

A robotic inspection company, Invert Robotics moved its headquarters from New Zealand to Ireland in early 2021, when it first announced the creation of its R&D team here. Last year, the deep-tech start-up’s international sales manager said that Invest Robotics’ clientele is showing rapid growth.

In 2023, Invert Robotics raised an additional €2.5m in its funding round, following a €10m raise to invest in its growth in Ireland.

LiveFlow

LiveFlow is a London-based accounting automation platform which builds tools that enable companies to streamline their financial management. The start-up does so by automating real-time insight and reports from large troves of data that would otherwise have to be processed through tools like Excel and Google Sheets.

Founded by Irishman Evan O’Brien – a former Web Summit software engineer – and former Revolut employees Anita Koimur and Lasse Kalkar, LiveFlow recently raised $13.5m in Series A funding round.

The start-up said that the latest funding will be used to expand its New York-based team and invest in new R&D initiatives. LiveFlow raised $3.5m in a seed funding round in 2021 – less than a year after it was founded.

Progressive Robotics

This Greek start-up develops AI-driven, no-code software solutions designed to automate and enhance robotic deployment. According to its website, Progressive Robotics wants to make robotics more accessible – even to SMEs, and allowing them to take advantage of automation without the associated high costs.

Progressive Robotics was founded in 2023 by Fotis Dimeas, Marios Kiatos and Zoe Doulgeri. Earlier this year, the start-up raised €1.55m in a seed funding round to enhance product development, scale operations and accelerate its growth internationally.

Reshape Biotech

Reshape Biotech, an AI and robotics start-up based in Copenhagen, Denmark brings AI and robotics together to automate visual lab experiments with greater speed and precision. The start-up is focused on improving R&D across three main industries: biotech, agriculture and food.

Reshape Biotech’s tech is used by researchers from the University of Oxford and Swiss agritech giant Syngenta, among others. The Danish start-up raised $20m in a funding round last year as it aims for the US market to speed up biomedical research. In 2023, the company raised $8.1m in a seed funding round, one of the largest seed rounds in Denmark.

Voiceline

Founded in 2020 by Nicolas Höflinger and Sebastian Pinkas, this German AI start-up has developed a solution that enables field staff to record customer interactions using voice input.

Voiceline’s platform automatically transcribes and analyses conversations. The information recorded is then used to generate automated follow-up actions.

Last year, the start-up raised €2.4m in a seed round, increasing its total funding to €4.2m.

Workist

And finally, Workist – another German start-up – offers AI-powered software that fully automates processing documents such as orders, requests for quotations or lists of services. According to the B2B transaction automator, its aim is to “free people from mundane, repetitive work”.

Founded in 2019, Workist is headquartered in Berlin, with offices in New York, Palo Alto and Tokyo. In 2022, it raised €9m in a Series A funding round led by Berlin’s Earlybird Centure Capital.

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