Irish-founded software company Qualio raises $50m in funding

Qualio, a software company founded and led by Irishman Robert Fenton, has raised a further $50 million (€40.8 million) in funding less than a year after securing $11 million from investors.

The San Francisco-headquartered company, which was founded in Dublin and retains an operation here, has undergone massive growth over the past 12 months as life sciences companies accelerate the rollout of products in the wake of the Covid crisis.

Founded by Mr Fenton in 2012, Qualio has developed a quality management software platform for the life sciences sector that helps companies create, deploy and manage products in a compliant and safe manner.

Its clients include German rare disease firm Centogene, and Poseida Therapeutics, the human therapeutics company in which Irish-listed Malin has a 15 per cent stake.

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Tiger Global, which has also previously backed Irish-founded companies such as Stripe, Flipdish and WorkVivo co-led the Series B round along with Menlo Ventures. Dublin-based Frontline Ventures, MHS Capital, Operator Partners, Sorenson Ventures and Storm Ventures, also participated.

Qualio is to use the financing to extend its electronic quality management software (eQMS) and services for life sciences customers, and to also fuel investment in product and engineering team growth.

Mr Fenton said Qualio has experienced “unprecedented customer demand” over the past 12 months, with revenues rowing more than 260 per cent year-on-year.

He said that using Qualio’s platform, life sciences companies can safely scale and accelerate availability of life-saving products.

Mr Fenton said the company is looking to expand headcount by 300 per cent by the end of the year with new roles in product development and engineering. He said the company already had a large number of people working in the Republic but that he expects this to increase further.

“I will always fly the Irish flag proudly, it is really important to me,” Mr Fenton said.

“We’ve already been investing in Ireland and we’re scaling out product roles and sales and customer facing roles there. We’ve even had some of our Bay Area team move to Ireland over the last year to work and they are in places like Dingle as well as in Dublin and Cork,” he added.