Irish tech unicorn Wayflyer to cut 40% of jobs globally

Irish tech unicorn Wayflyer is to cut 200 jobs from its global workforce of 500, with 70 roles expected to go in Dublin.

A further 10 jobs will relocate from the United States to Dublin, where it employs 220 people, as part of the reorganisation. That brings the total loss here to 60.

The move comes only months after the company, which provides revenue-based financing and marketing analytics for online businesses, said it would grow global staff numbers from 250 people to 600 by the end of the year.

[ Tech unicorn Wayflyer loses €22.8m in rapidly expanding business ]

The cuts come a day after a company spokeswoman said Wayflyer enjoyed “substantial growth” in 2022, to emerge as “the largest revenue-based finance operator in Europe”. The business lost €22.28 million last year due to expansion costs.

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The job cuts will also bring the company back to the headcount from 10 months ago.

Wayflyer has seen significant expansion in recent times, growing its headcount from 40 employees to 250 last year. In February the company announced it had become the sixth home-grown Irish tech unicorn after raising $150 million from investors at a $1.6 billion valuation.

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However, the global economic downturn has now hit the tech sector, with Meta, Amazon, Intercom and Stripe among those announcing lay-offs in recent days. Twitter has also cut staff numbers, with new owner Elon Musk implementing a 50 per cent reduction in global staff.

“We tried to scale our organisation very aggressively over the past 15 months and, in hindsight, we tried to do too much too soon,” said Aidan Corbett, co-founder and chief executive of Wayflyer. “We are now facing a challenging macroeconomic environment and this change will put the company in a stronger financial position to execute its plans for 2023 and beyond.”

Wayflyer said it had notified the appropriate Government officials of its plans. A consultation period for roles at risk of redundancy will begin this month.