Invest Northern Ireland said its support helped secure £764m of business investment in 2025–26, the largest total in more than a decade. The agency offered £126m of assistance across 2,221 investment projects, equating to roughly £6 of economic investment for every £1 of support.

Kieran Donoghue, CEO of Invest NI, said: "Securing three quarters of a billion pounds of investment in our economy is an increase of 19 per cent on what we secured in 2024-25. This brings us to a cumulative £1.4 billion investment over the first two years of our Business Strategy. This is a very strong performance at a time when businesses face increasing costs and competition, trade uncertainty, and rapid technological change."

"The support we provided in 2025-26 will also help companies to create 4,301 new jobs, up 45 per cent on the previous year. Of these, 85 per cent offer salaries above the Northern Ireland Private Sector Median (PSM) as our client companies create increasingly skilled roles.

The organisation said it met 48 of 56 activity targets in the year, with an average 85 per cent achievement rate where targets were missed. Investments spanned advanced manufacturing and engineering, agri-food, life and health sciences, technology and business services, with rising activity in automation, AI, R&D and product and process innovation.

Most investments came from locally owned firms, predominantly SMEs, which also received the majority of financial support. Invest NI also secured 20 first-time foreign direct investments, which are scaling in Northern Ireland.

Geographically, delivery mirrored the previous year. Almost 1,300 supported investments were located outside the Belfast Metropolitan Area (BMA) or had NI-wide impact, expected to generate nearly £359m in local economies and the potential for over 1,500 new jobs. This accounted for 59 per cent of all supported investments and 48 per cent of total value, exceeding the target for value outside the BMA but falling short of the 62.5 per cent target for the share of investments outside the area. Kieran continued: "The main ambition behind every project we support is to help businesses be more productive, innovative and competitive, whether that's through investment in capital equipment and automation, new product development, finding new clients in new markets or creating new and more skilled jobs. Projects such as the first-time investment by Bank of America with the potential to create up to 1,000 jobs, the £24.5m investment by Lakeland Dairies, £5m by Kestrel Foods and the 340 new jobs in Kainos are examples of how we are working with companies to enable the investment, that can generate positive economic and social outcomes.

"Both our two-year Business Strategy progress and our Client Performance Indicators (CPI) show that our support is helping our client base of over 2,300 to grow. These client companies employ just under 150,000 people, and from 2024 to 2025, they experienced a 7 per cent increase in sales, a 6 per cent increase in external sales, and a 7 per cent increase in exports.?This gives me confidence that we are making a difference. I am optimistic, therefore, that we will see positive growth in our economy in future years because of what we have achieved this year."

At the two-year mark of its 2024–27 Business Strategy, Invest NI reported £1.4bn of productive investment against a three-year target of £1.75bn, 4,293 investment projects against a target of 5,000, and 7,268 potential jobs against a target of 10,000. The latest CPI results also point to higher sales and exports alongside steady employment.

"As with every public body, we are facing budgetary challenges. As it stands right now, we have received a contingency allocation to enable us to continue to support both local businesses and international investors. I am confident that we can still deliver good outcomes with the funds we have available as we move into the final year of our current Business Strategy. As always, even in the context of a constrained financial position, our targets are the minimum of what we hope to achieve, and we will make every effort to deliver the best return possible for the public funds we are allocated.

"We are very grateful to our clients, partners and stakeholders for their support of our work last year and look forward to making further progress in the year ahead."

Commenting on the results, Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald said: "Despite a very challenging global environment, we are outperforming Britain in terms of output and export growth. Productivity is increasing and regional imbalances are narrowing. These strong results show that Invest NI is a key driver of this positive economic change.

"Invest NI's transformation agenda is working, and significant momentum has been built up over the last two years. As we move into the last year of the Business Strategy there is a strong basis to meet the target of 65 per cent of total investments outside the Belfast Metropolitan Area."