Expleo is a French-headquartered global engineering, technology and consulting service provider. Per its own description, its work is to guide leading organisations through business transformation, with services across AI engineering, digitalisation, hyperautomation, cybersecurity and data science. The real Dublin story arrived on 9 May 2024.
Why Dublin?
Expleo’s Ireland operation goes back more than 20 years. Its Dublin HQ is at 30 North Wall Quay, with a Belfast base alongside. A regional hub has been open in Cork (Mahon) since 2022. The Ireland footprint runs wider than a single city.
On top of this established footprint, the headline move came in May 2024: Expleo opened its €1m Global AI Centre of Excellence as a dual hub across Dublin and Belfast. The centre means Expleo’s worldwide AI work is run from Dublin and Belfast — not a regional AI office, but a global hub serving clients worldwide. RTÉ, Silicon Republic, Business Post and Irish Tech News all carried the launch.
The Centre, the Leads, and the Focus
The centre is co-led from the two cities: Rob McConnell (Director of Solutions, Expleo Ireland) on the Dublin side and Rebecca Keenan (Global Head of Intelligent Automation) on the global side. Rebecca Keenan framed the centre’s purpose plainly at launch: “There is currently a blank space in the AI landscape because businesses simply don’t know where to start. The launch of our AI Centre of Excellence hopes to fill in this gap and give organisations a jumping-off point for their AI journeys.”
The focus is multi-disciplinary engineering AI rather than a single product: generative AI, fraud detection, predictive analytics, quality assurance and ethical AI practices. A talent incubator layer runs alongside, with training programmes, mentorship and initiatives aimed at developing the next generation of AI leaders.
Expleo also publishes AI Pulse, a quarterly AI confidence research piece. In May 2026, Silicon Republic covered it under the title “Irish business leaders place higher value on empathy in AI” — Expleo is one of the globally recognised engineering firms feeding regular AI data into Ireland’s business conversation.
Place in the Dublin AI Ecosystem
A global engineering firm placing the brain of its worldwide AI operation in Dublin and Belfast is a concrete proof of Dublin’s hub position. Unlike newer arrivals, Expleo made the move from an already established Ireland footprint — which is why it is one of the Hub links in the all-island AI chain we follow.
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