The Trinity spin-out will use the funding to accelerate hospital adoption, expand its operations and engineering teams in Ireland, and advance its AI agents across healthcare applications.
Dublin-based health-tech start-up Akara, which is developing AI and sensor tech for hospital operations, has raised $5.5m in venture funding.
This latest raise, led by Locke Health, brings Akara’s total funding to date to $12.3m.
The funding round also saw participation from VTC Ventures, the EIC Fund, CommonKind and NovaVector Holdings, alongside existing investors ACT, Atlantic Bridge and Enterprise Ireland, as well as a number of strategic angel investors.
The Trinity College Dublin spin-out combines sensors with robots and AI tools to help hospitals reduce administrative work, coordinate services and treat more patients.
Akara said its wall-mounted sensors automatically capture how clinical spaces are used, while its software – which the company compared to an air traffic controller – detects key events and notifies staff when they are needed.
The company’s AI agents then allow staff to ask questions about captured data in natural language and generate reports, “reducing the effort required to turn operational information into practical improvements”, according to the start-up.
Akara’s tech also incorporates a combination of thermal sensing and edge AI to address privacy concerns about how the company collects data, as well as to dispel concerns about additional costs and infrastructure upgrades.
The start-up said its sensors use thermal data to understand activity without capturing detailed visual images of patients or staff, while the AI tech required to interpret that data runs locally on the device.
This combination also makes deployment simpler and more affordable by reducing reliance on additional computing infrastructure, according to Akara.
“Hospitals are under enormous pressure to do more with the people and resources they already have,” said Conor McGinn, co-founder and CEO of Akara. “We want to give staff time back and help hospitals treat more patients. To achieve that sustainably and at scale, the technology has to protect privacy, be straightforward to deploy and affordable.
“Combining thermal sensing with AI that runs on the device makes those goals central to how our technology works.”
Akara – which already has technology deployed in hospitals across Ireland, the UK and the US – will use the latest funding to accelerate hospital adoption, expand its operations and engineering teams in Ireland, and advance its AI agents across a wider range of healthcare applications.
“Akara stands out for its potential to deliver a compelling return on investment without placing heavy demands on hospital budgets, infrastructure or staff,” said Patrick Brennan, managing director of Locke Health.
“We believe it could be a disruptive force in healthcare, and we’re excited to help the team turn that potential into widespread adoption and measurable impact.”
Akara was founded in 2020 by a team of engineers and scientists including McGinn, Niamh Donnelly, Cian Donovan, Michael Cullinan and Eamon Bourke.
The start-up’s tech has appeared in Time magazine’s best inventions list not once – but twice.
In 2019, the health-tech’s robot Stevie shot to fame as a Time magazine cover star (while also making it to the best inventions list that year), while last year, the company’s AI sensor graced the list under the medical and healthcare category.
Last year, Akara also won the Irish leg of the 2025 KPMG Global Tech Innovator competition.
Shortly after the win, CTO Donnelly spoke to SiliconRepublic.com about Akara’s “grand vision”, access to healthcare and issues around inclusivity in the start-up landscape.
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