Claire McHugh

Claire McHugh is the CEO and co-Founder of Axonista.

Axonista is building the video-first future of commerce, and powers interactive video for global brands including QVC, HSN, WaterBear, and Oxfam. Axonista has a fully-remote team of 45 across Europe with its HQ in Ireland. Axonista was founded in 2010 by Claire McHugh and Daragh Ward, from a shared vision for how video storytellers could use touchscreen devices to interact with their viewers.

Axonista’s technology is the engine behind some of the world’s biggest video streaming apps, used by hundreds of thousands of people every day around the world. Axonista’s interactive video technology powers video commerce for QVC in the US, UK, and Germany, local news in Ohio and Oregon, environmental activism in the Netherlands, and the Irish Film Institute’s historical and cultural film archive player.

Claire has a career spanning TV and digital media and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Irish Film Institute, and of Scale Ireland. She has participated as an expert evaluator in the European Innovation Council and Creative Europe Media funding programmes.

Prior to co-founding Axonista, Claire was part of the team that established and managed the Setanta Sports channels in Ireland and UK, and worked in a number of web agencies, where she developed her love for technology, storytelling, and innovation.

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