TCD spin-out Danalto raises seed funding from Atlantic Bridge

IoT-focused company founders previously led the Pervasive Nation initiative

Danalto, a Trinity College Dublin spin-out focused on internet of things (IoT) services and technologies, has raised €750,000 in seed funding

The company specialises in deploying flexible IoT solutions based on the low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology standard, which allows long range communications at a low bit rate among connected objects such as sensors.

The seed investment was led by Atlantic Bridge's university fund with Enterprise Ireland also participating through its High Potential Start-up programme.

Danalto was founded by David McDonald and Tom Farrell, former vice-president and chief technology officer of Intune Networks, along with veteran telco engineer Albert Baker, last year.

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The founders previously led Pervasive Nation, a Science Foundation Ireland-backed initiative to establish an IoT research infrastructure to facilitate academic research and the testing of precommercial ideas by Irish companies.

It is currently building an extensive intellectual property (IP) portfolio in low energy IoT devices and systems and is working with several research centres and universities to commercialise projects. It is also involved in a number of ongoing initiatives, including a Dublin City Council initiative to address flooding issues in the capital through sensors that detect when gullies are overflowing.

The company was last week awarded additional funding under the Government's €75 million Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund as part of a consortium involving Intel, Davra Networks and Dublin City University looking to to provide a reliable, verifiable and secure end-to-end remote patient monitoring system.

LPWAN is emerging as one of the fastest growing IoT communication technologies with 22 billion connections predicted by 2025, up from seven billion this year, according to the research company IoT Analytics.

“The internet of things is in its infancy and we look forward to driving this market over the coming period so that enterprises can cost effectively gain more and better insight into their business operations,” said Mr McDonald, Danalto’s chief executive

The Atlantic Bridge University fund, which was initiated though a collaboration between TCD and University College Dublin, aims to accelerate the commercialisation of ground-breaking research coming from third-level institutions by providing capital and expertise for companies. Enterprise Ireland also participated in the investment.

It has previously backed a number of high potential start-ups including Aylien, DataChemist, AprisProtect, Volograms and Kastus, which won the overall Irish Times Innovation awards in 2017.

Charlie Taylor

Charlie Taylor

Charlie Taylor is a former Irish Times business journalist