⛳ €1bn in Revolut lending, 8,000-home zoning and an Irish win.

14 September 2026

Good morning. Revolut has passed €1bn in Irish lending, Wicklow has opened up land for around 8,000 homes and the cost squeeze is getting harder to ignore. At least Shane Lowry gave Ireland something to celebrate with a record Irish Open win, before Donald Trump turned up with a whiskey-tariff announcement. Let’s get into it.

Monday - The Weekend Round-Up…

The weekend's business news centred on deal activity, rising costs and Ireland's growing tech footprint. C&C Group agreed to buy Asahi UK's wholesale distribution business for nominal consideration, folding it into its Matthew Clark Bibendum operations, while reporting a 3% dip in net revenue. Developer Castlethorn sold its Parkgate Street scheme, which will include Ireland's tallest building, to the Land Development Agency, adding 562 affordable homes to its pipeline.

Household energy costs rose again as Energia announced gas and electricity price hikes from October, just days after Bord Gáis raised its own prices. Business Post reporting revealed Anthropic is scouting Dublin office space big enough for up to 1,000 staff near St Stephen's Green, far beyond its disclosed 200-job plan, as the company edges closer to a possible IPO. Separately, Irish plcs are on course to roughly halve share buyback spending this year, from a record €7.2bn in 2025 to about €3.5bn, with companies like Kingspan and CRH choosing to put cash toward acquisitions instead.

1. Revolut Passes €1bn In Irish Lending. Revolut’s Irish credit portfolio has passed €1bn across roughly 300,000 facilities, four years after it started lending here. Deposits are now above €2bn and customers hold more than €1.2bn in investments through the platform, while its active credit-card base has more than doubled in a year. Mortgages remain the conspicuous gap after their delayed launch, but Revolut is looking increasingly like the bank account itself rather than the app used alongside it, even if that isn't the case.

2. Housing Gets More Land, Then Meets The Capital Question. Wicklow County Council has rezoned land with capacity for around 8,000 homes, benefiting developers including Cairn, Glenveagh, DRES and Castlethorn. Glenveagh estimates the wider rezoning process could eventually leave councils with enough residential land capacity for one million homes by 2040, though zoning is obviously not delivery. CEO Stephen Garvey argues the next constraint is capital, including whether private money can be brought into cost-rental housing. More land helps but it's only useful where the finance is available to buy and build.

3. Irish Start-Ups Are Still Leaning Heavily On Foreign Money. Irish companies raised €578.4m in venture capital during the first half of 2026, down 10% year-on-year, with international investors supplying 82% of the total. Seed funding fell 23% to €50m, while no deals landed in the €10m to €30m range. Separately, BNY Ireland boss Paul Kilcullen wants investment products that channel more domestic savings into infrastructure and Irish businesses. That's not Government policy here but it is successful policy in other countries and that’s why the argument for it is popping up here.

4. The Autumn Cost Squeeze Is Getting Crowded. Energia has joined Bord Gáis and Airtricity in raising household energy prices, diesel is around €2.05 a litre, petrol about €1.96, and 1,000 litres of home-heating oil now costs more than €1,530. Add last week’s ECB rate increase and Philip Lane’s warning that inflation could reach at least 3.6% by year-end, with food prices also expected to accelerate, and October’s Budget is arriving at an even less comfortable backdrop than had be expected. An occasional price rise can be absorbed several arriving together mean challenging times for businesses and consumer ahead.

5. Irish Exporters Find Growth In Scotland. Enterprise Ireland client exports to Scotland rose 46% in 2025, with more than 300 Irish businesses now selling there. Infrastructure and energy transition are helping drive that growth, while 30% of surveyed firms identified Scotland as a target for further expansion.

The biggest names in AI are suddenly asking whether things are moving too fast. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei called for slower development of the most advanced models, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk backing parts of his proposal, while Donald Trump dismissed many of the warnings and said America cannot afford to lose its lead over China. Elsewhere, markets are pricing an 86% chance of a US rate rise this week after hotter inflation, Christine Lagarde says Europe’s inflation shock will last longer than expected, and Bitcoin Suisse is proposing to cut up to half of its 120-person Swiss workforce.

Tech & AI

Tech & AI enters the week defined by a scramble for chip capacity, even as fresh alarm from inside the industry raises questions about how fast that build out should move.

Apple's John Ternus took his first product launch as chief executive this month, unveiling what analysts call the biggest iPhone overhaul in years, including a first foldable model expected to cost upwards of $2,000. IDC analyst Francisco Jerónimo says Ternus faces four tests beyond the launch itself, fixing Siri and Apple Intelligence, defining what comes after the iPhone, opening the platform to developers, and managing a global memory shortage now pushing up component costs across the industry.

That shortage is visible elsewhere too. Chinese chipmakers Huawei and Cambricon have raised AI processor prices as high bandwidth memory costs squeeze efforts to build domestic Nvidia alternatives, while OpenAI is deepening chip research and production ties with Samsung in Seoul, alongside existing Stargate memory supply deals with Samsung and SK Hynix. Paris based Mistral AI, meanwhile, raised €3bn at a valuation above €21bn, led by Samsung, positioning itself as Europe's sovereign alternative to American and Chinese models.

The pace of that race drew scrutiny too. An Anthropic researcher resigned last week warning the company and OpenAI were "gambling with our lives," and Anthropic's own alignment lead backed the concern, putting the odds of AI causing human extinction within a decade above ten per cent.

Ireland's stake in the build out just got bigger regardless. Business Post reporting revealed Anthropic is seeking Dublin office space for up to 1,000 staff, well beyond its disclosed 200 job plan, as the company edges toward a possible IPO.

In Tuesday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Legal & Regulatory.

Shane Lowry won the Irish Open at Doonbeg by a record 11 shots, having also fired a course-record 62 along the way, before Donald Trump handed him the trophy and announced he would scrap US tariffs on Irish whiskey after being lobbied by Lowry and Micheál Martin. That came during a visit in which Trump also said Ireland had “fleeced” America of medical companies, praised Irish businesspeople as “vicious bastards” and again backed a united Ireland. All pretty unhinged even by Donald Trump standards but, following what could have been a very difficult weekend for Ireland, it can only really be viewed as a double win: Ireland escaped Trump and Lowry is back on top. Fantastic.

The Read – Business Post (Subscription Required)  – Dilosk, Capitalflow... and more? Ireland's non-bank lending sector is on the cusp of consolidation

Grid Finance chief executive Derek Foley Butler argues Ireland's 60-plus non-bank SME lenders should shrink to around 20, pointing to Dilosk's sale to Pepper, Capitalflow's ongoing sale process and Finance Ireland's earlier takeover talks with PTSB and Bawag. Central Bank data shows non-banks consistently pay higher funding costs than deposit-backed pillar banks, squeezing margins as rates stay elevated. Industry figures interviewed expect private equity, rather than Irish banks, to drive the coming wave of deals, drawn by technology, underwriting expertise and borrower relationships as much as loan books themselves. Link: Dilosk, Capitalflow... and more? Ireland's non-bank lending sector is on the cusp of consolidation

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