When CalypsoAI opened its office in Dublin in June last year, it had a growth plan. The centre of excellence for the generative AI security company would accommodate up to 50 staff within two years, growing from the 20 it had hired in Ireland and Britain in the three years since it had begun operating here.
But as the demand for generative artificial intelligence services in business has exploded, so too has CalypsoAI’s business. So much so that the company has met its 50-person target about a year ahead of schedule, and has just announced that it will double its staff numbers in Dublin over the next year and make the office here its co-headquarters with New York.
It is a big step for the Irish office under new chief executive Donnchadh Casey. The Irishman was named as founder Neil Serebryany’s successor in August, only a matter of months after joining the company as its chief operating officer.
Calypso has pitched itself as a unique offering in the AI market. Founded by Serebryany in 2018, it gives companies the chance to use AI technology including large-language models – or generative AI – while ensuring data remains secure. Not only does it protect organisations from data leaks, it also uses GenAI to fight GenAI, protecting against other security threats such as jailbreaks, hallucinations and prompt injection attacks.
Casey has experience in growing tech companies in Europe. Before joining CalypsoAI, he was chief customer officer at Qualtrics, the US-based software company that allows organisations to create online surveys and track employee satisfaction and customer interactions. As the company grew and changed hands from its investors to SAP to IPO and most recently to Silver Lake, he recalls it as a “rollercoaster ride”.
“I was one of the first European employees and built out a lot of European business with [founders Ryan and Jared Smith]. We went from double-digit million annual recurring revenue to a couple of billion; from lower mid-market into enterprise; and from basically a US business to a global business,” says Casey.
After 10 years with the company, though, Casey was up for a new challenge.
“When you look back over 10 years at a company, you think the times I actually had the best fun and when I look back I’m most proud of was in a room with a group of people that you like working with, solving problems for the first time. Where it’s the first deal in a certain country, it’s the first product push in a certain language, it’s a new feature ... pushing the boundaries and kind of achieving that as part of a group,” he says. “We had a lot of those. At some point in the company’s maturity, you stop having them as often, and I wanted to go back to a world where I could build something.”
The jump to CalypsoAI made sense. The company’s chief technology officer, Jimmy White, had previously worked at Qualtrics with Casey, and CalypsoAI was in the middle of building something new and exciting – exactly what Casey thrived on, even if it does involve a certain amount of risk. On the positive side, you get to have a bigger influence on the business.
[ Security start-up CalypsoAI raises $23m in funding roundOpens in new window ]
“When you’re moving gigs, you really want to be running towards something. It was the right time for me at Qualtrics as well. We’d been through that rollercoaster, so it was just right time, right place,” he says. “You get to shape businesses, shape industries if we’re lucky enough, to be able to impact it the way we want, to be able to write the playbook from scratch.”
CalypsoAI is now in full hiring mode. It has new offices in Dublin city centre that it plans to fill, hiring from across tech companies in Ireland.
GenAI is a relatively new frontier, though. Does that mean filling the jobs here will be more difficult? Casey acknowledges that getting talent with experience in Ireland is hard but the company is pulling from not only the tech sector, but also academia.
“We’re punching above our weight in terms of who we’re hiring here, and that momentum is only growing. In terms of data science, we’re getting people from top institutes across Europe, like the Turing Institute in the UK.
“It’s not always Irish, like any tech company; it’s a mix of Irish people and people from across Europe,” he says. “You do get access to the broader Dublin ecosystem, and AI talent is going to be the new tier that everybody’s looking for. We’re having to take people from academia to get the real cutting-edge people. Those people would be yearning to put their skills into practice.”
[ Skilling Up Ireland for an AI futureOpens in new window ]
One of the newer jobs in the AI business is prompt engineer, one of the roles that CalypsoAI is recruiting for. These are the people who phrase the queries, or prompts, in natural language in a way that gets the GenAI to deliver optimum results. It didn’t exist two years ago as a career option; now it is being filled by graduates in English rather than those with a laser focus on technology.
That in itself brings new diversity to CalypsoAI’s staff and, with it, new perspectives.
“One of our values is to be explorers. Everybody here is working on something for the first time, whether we’re building a product for the first time, whether we’re marketing, selling that product for the first time, whether we’re supporting customers or deploying it for the first time. Prompt engineer is just one part of that, figuring out what works,” he says.
“Diverse perspectives are always great. People who think differently are always great. One challenge a tech company has is that you end up with a certain slew of folks who all think the same, which is not healthy.”
Casey also wants to see the company give back to the industry too, allowing its new Dublin office to be used as a resource for the broader tech community. Among the plans are hosting meet-ups, the first of which is due to take place on Thursday.
With any growth in business, though, come challenges. In Ireland, that means dealing with a housing crisis and a rental market that may be out of the reach of more junior staff. Although younger staff are more willing to share accommodation, Casey says, something needs to be done.
“It’s hard in Dublin, and it’s a real problem, and we need to try and solve it,” says Casey. “We hope the Government will start putting measures in place and thinking about the plan for infrastructure in Ireland holistically – housing, transportation, energy, water, everything. But from an employee perspective, housing and transportation is the big one, and we do have a challenge in getting people in, particularly landing for the first time from outside the country.”
CalypsoAI offers staff relocating to Dublin some support while they find a place locally. Casey says it can be more difficult hiring senior people to come to Dublin as they might have different accommodation needs than younger staff – space for family, local schools and so on. That may become more of an issue as the company continues to grow. When pushed for an estimate of future jobs plans in Ireland, Casey says the company may double again in size in the near future, bringing it to 200 in total if the business stays on its current trajectory. As the business case for using AI continues to be made, it’s not hard to imagine that it will come to pass – as long as CalypsoAI gets the right people in place.
“It’s a really privileged place to be,” says Casey, “but as part of that, we need to make sure that we’re continuing to hire top talents.”
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