On April 15, 2025, Dublin-based fintech startup Assiduous announced the successful closure of a €1 million funding round. The investment marks a crucial milestone in the startup’s mission to democratize access to corporate finance tools and advisory services for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). With this capital infusion, Assiduous aims to roll out its AI-native “Corporate Finance Autopilot” platform, an innovative solution that addresses a long-standing gap in how smaller businesses access the capital markets.
Solving a Systemic Problem for SMEs
SMEs form the economic backbone of Europe and much of the global economy. In the EU alone, SMEs make up over 99% of all businesses and contribute nearly two-thirds of private sector employment. Yet, these enterprises often struggle with one major issue—accessing funding beyond traditional bank loans.
Most SMEs cannot afford full-time corporate finance experts or retain costly advisors. As a result, many either delay expansion plans or miss out on growth opportunities because they lack the knowledge or support to navigate capital markets. Assiduous wants to change that. The startup’s founders built a platform specifically designed to eliminate the bottlenecks SMEs face while raising capital, preparing for mergers, or launching IPOs.
Instead of relying on human consultants or complex Excel-based workflows, SMEs using Assiduous’ platform will gain an AI-powered co-pilot capable of generating deal structures, investor presentations, fundraising strategies, and financial projections—automatically.
Inside the Corporate Finance Autopilot
At the heart of Assiduous’ platform lies agentic AI, a new class of artificial intelligence that operates independently to complete complex business tasks. Unlike traditional tools that require a human to provide step-by-step inputs, agentic AI operates like a digital consultant—it interprets goals, collects data, builds workflows, and presents solutions.
Assiduous leverages this capability to offer SMEs what it calls “Autopilot Mode” for capital readiness. A founder or CFO can input basic company data and define goals—such as raising a Series A round or exploring a strategic exit. From there, the platform handles the rest. It generates a funding plan, assembles the financial models, conducts benchmarking against peers, outlines transaction structures, and even simulates valuation scenarios.
The system pulls in data from multiple sources: uploaded internal financials, public market data, industry reports, and regional investor activity. Then, using trained models and frameworks similar to what investment bankers use, the platform outputs customized financial strategies in hours instead of weeks.
This kind of automation empowers SMEs to become capital-market ready without the need for expensive advisors or in-house finance departments. The value lies not just in speed, but in the clarity and structure it brings to the fundraising process—something that can be overwhelming for early-stage companies.
Strong Support from Investors and Strategic Programs
The €1 million investment came from a mix of experienced business owners, financial executives, and institutional partners. Enterprise Ireland, through its High-Potential Start-Up (HPSU) programme, played a key role in supporting the startup’s growth. The investment validates the trust that the Irish innovation ecosystem places in Assiduous and its leadership.
Assiduous also participated in the EIT Digital Open Innovation Factory 2024, a prestigious program known for incubating deep-tech startups across Europe. During this program, Assiduous formed a strategic collaboration with Euronext Group, the leading pan-European exchange.
This partnership holds significant promise. Euronext operates major stock exchanges across Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, and other key European cities. Through this collaboration, Assiduous aims to help SMEs engage with capital markets earlier in their lifecycle. Euronext, for its part, seeks to attract a larger pipeline of “capital-ready” companies by removing structural hurdles that prevent SMEs from approaching IPOs and bond issuances.
The Founders: Deep Expertise Meets Bold Vision
Assiduous was founded in 2023 by Fergal Meegan and Barry Murphy, two former investment bankers with a combined 30+ years of experience in capital markets, M&A advisory, and corporate strategy. Their careers spanned global banks, IPO deals, and complex financing transactions.
They witnessed a consistent pattern: large corporations could afford elite financial advice and tap capital markets with ease, while smaller businesses remained stuck due to cost barriers and complexity. Meegan and Murphy decided to build a platform that could replicate the work of corporate finance teams at a fraction of the cost, making it accessible for startups and SMEs across Europe.
The company operates out of NovaUCD, University College Dublin’s hub for high-potential startups. NovaUCD provides the infrastructure, mentorship, and academic resources needed to support deep-tech ventures like Assiduous.
Building for the Future: Expansion and Hiring
With fresh capital secured, Assiduous now plans to accelerate its development roadmap. The team will expand its technical and product engineering departments, hiring top-tier AI and data science talent. The focus will remain on refining the agentic AI models and embedding domain-specific finance intelligence directly into the application layer.
The roadmap includes advanced modules for:
- Real-time investor matching based on funding stage, geography, and industry focus.
- Autonomous document generation for IMs (Information Memoranda), term sheets, and pitch decks.
- Scenario simulation tools to test different equity-debt funding combinations and outcomes.
By the end of 2026, Assiduous aims to support thousands of SMEs across the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Nordics, and Benelux. Plans also include multi-language support to expand into Southern and Eastern Europe.
Pricing will follow a tiered subscription model—a freemium version with basic features for early-stage startups, a professional tier with full Autopilot access for scaling companies, and an enterprise version with white-label integration for accounting and financial advisory firms.
Market Impact: Redefining Corporate Finance
Assiduous enters the market at a time when digital disruption continues to reshape how businesses interact with financial services. While tools like QuickBooks, Xero, and Stripe helped digitize accounting and payments, few platforms exist for strategic financial decision-making and capital readiness.
Assiduous fills that gap by providing both strategic intelligence and execution tools. Its goal doesn’t stop at making SMEs funding-ready. It wants to make them smarter, faster, and more financially independent.
The impact of this innovation could extend beyond startups and reach into mid-sized firms preparing for international expansion or family businesses looking for succession solutions.
Assiduous envisions a world where any entrepreneur, regardless of background or network, can launch and scale a company with the same financial intelligence as a publicly listed firm.
Final Thoughts
Assiduous is not just building another fintech product. It is creating a new infrastructure layer for how small and medium enterprises access capital, make strategic decisions, and unlock value. The founders understand the depth of the problem they are solving, and their technology offers a scalable and intelligent alternative to traditional finance advisory models.
As the business landscape evolves and more founders seek control over their financial futures, tools like Assiduous’ Corporate Finance Autopilot will become indispensable.
If successful, Assiduous won’t just help SMEs raise money. It will change how they think about money in the first place.