{"id":518984,"date":"2026-04-08T05:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518984\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T05:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:50:15","slug":"artificial-intelligence-how-irish-engineers-are-cashing-in-on-ai-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518984\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence: How Irish engineers are cashing in on AI boom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meanwhile on Monday a different French firm agreed a deal to buy a company in the Republic of Ireland which also has data centre expertise.<\/p>\n

Bureau Veritas said it would pay \u20ac375m (\u00a3327m) for LotusWorks which is based in Sligo.<\/p>\n

LotusWorks specialises in the final testing and optimising of data centres before they are switched on and then looks after their ongoing maintenance.<\/p>\n

The deal will mean a significant payday for the management team which has controlled the business since 2018.<\/p>\n

But these deals are not the biggest data centre fortunes which have been made in Ireland in recent years.<\/p>\n

In 2025 Cork-based Dornan Group was sold to the US construction services firm Turner for a reported \u20ac400m (\u00a3349m).<\/p>\n

In 2024 the global investment company Blackstone bought a majority stake in Dublin-based Winthorp Technologies.<\/p>\n

Both deals were worth tens of millions of euros to the companies founders and senior managers.<\/p>\n

However, the most lucrative deal of them all concerns Philip O’Doherty.<\/p>\n

In 2021 he sold his Donegal-based firm E&I Engineering to the US company Vertiv Holdings.<\/p>\n

The value of that deal was reported as being worth \u00a31.45bn in cash and shares, with about 80% of that going to O’Doherty and the rest to smaller shareholders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The most important aspect of that deal has turned out to be the Vertiv shares that O’Doherty received.<\/p>\n

The deal was done before the AI boom had really begun so each Vertiv share was then worth around $25. <\/p>\n

Today Vertiv’s share price is around $250.<\/p>\n

Since April 2024, O’Doherty has gradually been selling his Vertiv shares.<\/p>\n

His most recent sale in March this year generated about \u00a3298m, bringing total proceeds from shares to about \u00a3950m.<\/p>\n

He continues to hold Vertiv shares worth just under \u00a31bn. <\/p>\n

On top of that the cash portion of the deal was worth about\u00a3700m.<\/p>\n

Altogether the total value of the deal has turned out at about \u00a32.5bn making him the most successful Irish industrialist of his generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meanwhile on Monday a different French firm agreed a deal to buy a company in the Republic of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-518984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}