Barry Downes

Barry Downes is a software founder turned venture capitalist with deep domain expertise in artificial intelligence, security, and immersive technologies. He founded FeedHenry, a leader in mobile cloud middleware, which was acquired by Red Hat/IBM in 2014 — one of the more notable Irish enterprise software exits of its era. Prior to that, he served as CEO of the Walton Institute, a leading academic software research and "futurist" institute that collaborated with top Silicon Valley and European global software companies on advanced technology research projects.

In 2017 he co-founded Sure Valley Ventures, an entrepreneur-led, UK- and Ireland-focused venture capital firm investing in high-potential, early-stage AI software companies. He is Managing Partner of the firm and also serves as Chief Investment Officer of Sure Ventures plc, a London Stock Exchange–listed investment trust (LSE:SURE). Sure Valley's flagship UK fund launched in early 2022 as a £95m (first close £85m) vehicle, with the British Business Bank's Enterprise Capital Funds programme as cornerstone investor committing £50m.

Downes holds a BSc in Applied Computing from Waterford Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Smurfit Business School at University College Dublin, plus executive qualifications from Henley Business School (UK), Harvard Law School, and the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley (in Venture Capital). He is an active public voice on early-stage investing and AI, speaking at conferences such as ARVR Innovate and publishing an annual "AI Predictions" white paper.

• Invests in early-stage AI software companies across the UK and Ireland, primarily at seed stage, with capacity to follow on through Series A and beyond.
• Check sizes of roughly £250k–£1.5m initially (targeting up to ~15–20% ownership) at entry valuations often in the £2m–£8m range.
• Sees AI as the connective tissue across sectors: "We see AI as underpinning all these sectors and the majority of our portfolio has some element of AI." Core themes include AI agents/platforms, open-source AI, reinforcement learning, security software, immersive/AR-VR, and IoT.
• Says yes to deep technical teams with "real technological differentiation" — explicitly avoiding companies "merely wrapping ChatGPT APIs" — plus evidence of enterprise willingness to pay (pilots, LOIs, revenue) and scalable unit economics.
• Prizes founder-market fit and balanced teams: "Entrepreneurship is all about identifying a critical opportunity or problem that can be solved for a customer," and "One person can't do it all."
• Brings an operator's lens as a former founder who has built and sold a company, positioning the firm as founder-friendly and able to help portfolio companies attract international follow-on investors.