Ronan Murphy’s cybersecurity group made a €14 million gain on the sale of its stake in Cork-based AI company Getvisibility last year.
Texas-headquartered cybersecurity company Forcepoint announced the acquisition of Getvisibility in March 2025 for an undisclosed fee.
Murphy, a member of the state’s AI advisory council who previously founded cybersecurity firm Smarttech247, set up Getvisibility in 2018 with Mark Brosnan.
He held his interest in Getvisibility through his own investment company Amplified Technologies Limited and Smarttech247 subsidiary Zefone Limited, which combined to a 27.4 per cent interest in the company.
RM Block
New financial filings for Amplified Technologies Limited, a firm owned outright by Murphy that has consolidated his stake in Getvisibility, show its total proceeds from the sale were €14.3 million.
Based on the proceeds Murphy’s firm recorded from the sale, the company was acquired by Forcepoint in a deal worth more than €50 million.
Murphy, a well-known Cork-based entrepreneur, has been involved in the cybersecurity sector for more than a decade.
Getvisibility was a start-up he formed as a spin-out from Smarttech247, the latter of which he set up in 2008. The start-up raised close to €13 million in funding before the sale from individual investors and venture capital firms.
Murphy secured close to €13 million of investment from a number of well-known businesspeople for Getvisibility, which developed software that used AI to protect unstructured data contained in PDFs, spreadsheets and digital text files.
Eir’s former chief executive Herb Hribar, who was chair of Getvisibility, held a near 4 per cent stake in the company, while Brosnan was recorded as having a near 15 per cent stake in the company.
Irish-based Sure Valley Ventures, led by Barry Downes, backed the firm at seed stage and in a Series A round. Other large backers to the €10 million Series A round included Luxembourg investor Alpha Intelligence Capital and Belgian venture firm Fortino Capital.
Following the sale, senior Getvisibility staff including Murphy, Brosnan and chief financial officer Henry Duggan have joined Forcepoint to take senior engineering and business development roles. Murphy has joined as chief data strategy officer,
Forcepoint, which has 2,000 staff globally, has developed computer security software and data protection systems used by IBM, Toyota and CVS. It already employed more than 100 people in Cork before the deal for Getvisibility.
Murphy floated Smarttech247 on the London Stock Exchange in December 2022. Last year, the firm delisted from the exchange after its board concluded that it has been “significantly undervalued” in public markets.
