Bitwise Industries, a California technology training company that opened an El Paso office in April and has one in the works in Las Cruces, has furloughed its 900-person workforce and stopped operations in six cities.

The Fresno-based company’s board of directors decided Monday to furlough its workforce due to financial issues, The Fresno Bee newspaper reported Wednesday.

Nine employees were in El Paso and one in Las Cruces in early April. But the company had big plans for the two cities, including having about 100 employees in each city in about a year.

It specializes in providing technology courses and tech apprenticeships for people with low incomes and those without college degrees. It also operates a tech consulting business that hires some of its course graduates.

“Several critical (financial) transactions either did not materialize or materialized unfavorably, and the quantum of that is quite large,” Jake Soberal, the company’s co-founder and co-chief executive officer, told the Fresno newspaper.

Soberal said he expected the furloughs to be "a very temporary action" while the board and executive team determine the next steps.

The 10-year-old company received $200 million from several venture investment firms over several years to help fund its growth, according to Bitwise information provided to the El Paso Times in April.

It has four offices in California, one in Ohio, and one in Downtown El Paso. It had four offices in development prior to the furloughs: Las Cruces; Greeley, Colorado; Buffalo, New York; and Chicago.

Bitwise officials in El Paso and Fresno did not immediately respond to requests for comments. The company's social media platforms as of Thursday morning had no mentions about the company's problems.

Kat Sanchez, recently hired to run the Las Cruces office, said she could not make public comments. Santiago Villegas, who handled media relations for the company, said in an email Wednesday that he no longer represented the company and advised sending questions to a Bitwise email address.

The company opened a temporary El Paso office April 3 on a portion of the second floor of the Sotoa Building, a former factory turned into offices at 500 W. Overland Ave., in Downtown's struggling Union Plaza District.

Bitwise officials planned to buy a Downtown-area building to renovate for its permanent El Paso location. One of its specialties is renovating buildings for its so-called tech hubs, which include cowork spaces rented to individuals and small businesses for various fees.

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In Las Cruces, the company last fall bought the three-story Bank of the West office building in Downtown, where it planned to open an office and cowork space on a portion of the ground floor.

Bitwise had planned to begin online technology classes in May in El Paso as part of a $7.4 million program run by Bitwise Impact, a nonprofit organization closely aligned with Bitwise Industries. El Paso City Council approved providing $1.6 million in federal funds for that program.

The Las Cruces City Council last year approved giving $1 million to a partnership of Bitwise Industries and the Community Foundation of Southern New Mexico to provide tech training and other tech services in Las Cruces.

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421, vkolenc@elpasotimes.com and @vickolenc on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Bitwise tech training firm stops operations in El Paso, other cities