{"id":206322,"date":"2025-12-29T07:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T07:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/206322\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T07:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T07:26:07","slug":"tech-start-up-boss-who-founded-demonware-hopes-new-ai-product-will-change-the-game-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/206322\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech start-up boss who founded Demonware hopes new AI product will \u2018change the game\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) integration company Jentic, Sean Blanchfield believes he has founded one of the last businesses which will not be replaced by AI.<\/p>\n

The Demonware founder and former director of the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) joined co-founders Dorothy Creaven, Michael Cordner and Dr Tilman Schaefer to create Jentic in 2024 with some very ambitious goals.<\/p>\n

Jentic is making software aimed at connecting AI into commercial systems in a safe way to better enable businesses\u2019 use of the technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have identified one of the very last things that can be built that\u2019s going to enable [the integration of AI] but not be replaced by it,\u201d says Blanchfield.<\/p>\n

His early interaction with AI made it clear its software generation capabilities would really \u201cchange the future of software companies\u201d, he says. <\/p>\n

\u201cAI is getting so good so fast, that you think you\u2019re selling a product to customers, but pretty soon your customers will be able to generate their own products.\u201d<\/p>\n

This will \u201ctotally change the game\u201d, he says, adding that it led him to make some \u201cfatalistic conclusions about the future of software and start-ups\u201d.<\/p>\n

He believes AI is \u201cgoing to replace all enterprise software\u201d and that integrating AI with commercial software will be a multibillion-euro market, with companies needing a system to go between their own data and technology and the AI platform.<\/p>\n

He is not alone in seeing Jentic\u2019s potential, with the company securing backing from Amazon Web Services<\/a> (AWS) via its generative AI accelerator. It was the first Irish company to be selected for this and one of just 40 companies selected from more than 3,000 applicant firms. This, Blanchfield says, is a \u201creal endorsement\u201d of Jentic\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n

This came on the back of a \u20ac4 million pre-seed funding round led by private markets investment firm Elkstone and alongside angel investors including the \u201cIrish tech mafia and a couple of rugby players\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bolstered by that investment, Jentic has in the past year grown from four staff to 23 and is about to move forward with its first enterprise products in the new year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing this for enterprises \u2013 this is where the highest-stakes data is\u201a\u201d says Blanchfield. While other tech start-ups may want to \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d, this is not Jentic\u2019s approach, as it needs to treat high-stakes data \u201cvery very carefully\u201d, he says. <\/p>\n

This type of middleware technology is not new to Blanchfield: it is the type of software he has experience building, and he has built a career on this.<\/p>\n

His entrepreneurial journey began while studying at Trinity College Dublin<\/a> in 1997. He went door-to-door offering to build websites for companies shortly after the \u201cdawn of the modern web\u201d.<\/p>\n

A year later, while in the final year of his degree, Blanchfield, alongside Ronan Perceval and Dylan Collins, started a group text messaging business akin to WhatsApp<\/a>. That business would go on to become booking management software company Phorest, whose revenue is threatening to reach \u20ac50 million this year.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0How AI is reshaping employment \u2013 and what that means for IrelandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cPhorest is quite a successful company now and is still run by Ronan 25 years later. [It] is worth an insane amount of money, employing hundreds of people, the leader in its category of solid management systems\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Describing himself as the \u201cgeek of the crew\u201d, Blanchfield says he was part-time chief technology officer at Phorest while doing a computer science PhD for 2\u00bd years.<\/p>\n

The doctorate focused on distributed systems, or peer-to-peer downloading, he says, explaining it examines \u201chow not to get caught by Metallica for downloading Nothing Else Matters\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was during this time that the team got the idea for Demonware, inspired by Havoc, a games technology company founded out of Trinity\u2019s computer science school that would later be acquired by Intel.<\/p>\n

At the turn of the millennium, Blanchfield says, they noticed all of the staff and students at the computer lab in Trinity would switch from college work and Microsoft Office to playing online games as soon as it reached 5pm. <\/p>\n

There were online video games on \u201cnearly every screen in every computer lab\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n

The team realised games studios would be looking to work with someone to develop the networking software to power the gameplay.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can go in there and build a technology stack that solves the boring bit of moving all the traffic around the internet in real time,\u201d he says, linking it to the work he did as part of his PhD.<\/p>\n

That idea became Demonware, with Saturday morning management meetings held among the young Trinity graduates: BlanchfielCollins and Perceval.<\/p>\n

The team decided to \u201cbuild a networking stack for video games and sell it the same way that Havoc sells physics for video games\u201d. Following 12 months of raising capital, Demonware was born out of \u20ac500,000 in funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of surprising that we raised money at all,\u201d Blanchfield says, laughing. \u201cWe were basically kids saying we want to work in the video games industry, so we\u2019re going to start a company.\u201d<\/p>\n

The networking technology the company created went on to power the online services for some of the most iconic video games of all time. The Call of Duty franchise is still powered by Demonware\u2019s code stack today. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Time to take off the stabilisers and see what AI can really doOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The company was acquired by Activision Blizzard in 2007 for a seven-figure sum. It powered all of Activision\u2019s online gaming services, including the Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, and Spider-Man franchises. Demonware\u2019s intellectual property was also behind some Ubisoft titles too, such as Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon.<\/p>\n

Blanchfield stayed on at the company after the acquisition, but \u201cit was quite a rough period\u201d for him. Activision Blizzard had a \u201ccompetitive culture\u201d, he says. He says he struggled with the transition away from being an owner of the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was no longer my company,\u201d he says, admitting he was still feeling the pressure of ownership and of defending his team within the new structure. \u201cI was taking it to bed with me every night, and not sleeping as a consequence.\u201d<\/p>\n

He left the company less than two years after its sale.<\/p>\n

\u201cA good fraction of humanity has played Call of Duty or Guitar Hero at some point,\u201d he says. \u201cCall of Duty has made a billion a year since then and you have to attribute a decent fraction of that to Demonware.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blanchfield says the team \u201csold early, but there was no other option\u201d. The company\u2019s original ownership \u201cdid okay, not like retiring money or anything\u201d. He admits he has been left with \u201ca bit of a chip on the shoulder\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the best that companies in Ireland tended to do for a long time,\u201d the Jentic founder says. But with his new company, he is \u201creally keen to raise that game\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In artificial intelligence (AI) integration company Jentic, Sean Blanchfield believes he has founded one of the last businesses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[91215,414,1795,12033,16387,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-206322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-activision","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-web-services","tag-aws","tag-elkstone","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}