Altada, the artificial intelligence-based platform founded by Allan Beechinor and Niamh Parker, has temporarily furloughed about 40 of its 160 staff as it prepares to close a new funding round.

The Cork founded business provides AI-based solutions to customers in sectors such as financial services, security and travel in order to help them make better decisions by understanding their data.

Altada has been growing at pace, closing a seed funding round of $11.5 million last September. The round was led by Rocktop Partners, a Texas-based alternative investment manager.

It started raising a new series A round this year but, like many other tech companies, it has been impacted by a tighter funding environment.

It is now understood to be closing a new investment round that will allow it to continue to grow.

In response to questions from The Currency, the company said: “Altada technology solutions continues to expand in the financial services industry and onboard new clients to our AI platform and asset management use cases.

“Due to uncertain market conditions in the US, it was prudent to furlough a number of employees on a short term basis while we close our current funding round.”

The company did not comment on the number of people impacted.

However, Altada is understood to employ over 160 people, with about 40 people placed on temporary furlough. This includes one of its teams in the United States. The roles impacted do not appear to include its core data science team which drives the business.

Altada co-founder Niamh Parker

Altada is backed by Enterprise Ireland, Elkstone as well as a number of Irish angel investors. In an interview with The Irish Times last year, Beechinor said: “We’re essentially providing AI as a platform to companies, particularly those in the financial services space, to rapidly increase their adoption of commercialisation activities.”

“Our solutions help reduce processing costs, create new levels of efficiency and optimise existing resource allocation, which is why we believe we can scale and assume a leading position in this space.”

Altada has previously survived insolvency and a shareholder battle, but its high potential technology has struck a chord with potential investors.