Troy

Apprenda is shutting down its operations, according to a prominent investor in the Troy-based software company.

Venture capital firm Safeguard Scientifics has invested $22.1 million in Apprenda since 2013 and held a 29 percent ownership stake in the company, corporate controller Dave Kille said during an earnings call Thursday. Safeguard took a $6.6 million charge against earnings during the second quarter to write off its ownership in Apprenda.

"Apprenda recently decided to wind down its operations," Kille said during the call.

The news was first reported Friday by the Albany Business Review. Calls to Apprenda CEO Sinclair Schuller and Jesse Kliza, the vice president of marketing, went unanswered Friday.

A section on Apprenda's website with a "Leadership" heading is blank, and more than a dozen job postings say "this account is not active" when selected.

Apprenda was founded in 2007 by Abraham Sultan and Schuller, both graduates of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, and Matt Ammerman, a graduate of the University at Albany. Originally located in Clifton Park, the company moved to First Columbia's Hedley Park Place in Troy in 2014.

Apprenda made a software platform that other companies used to develop new software and connect it to their existing internal software programs. Past clients have included banks like JPMorgan Chase and health care companies like AmerisourceBergen that have large IT and computer programing departments.

Asked during the call what prompted the company's shutdown of operations, Safeguard CEO and president Brian Sisko said the firm is "disappointed ... that we ultimately weren't successful with Apprenda."

"It is pretty unusual for a company to gain the level of traction that Apprenda did," but the company did "not successfully market itself for exit," Sisko said.

"There were some very significant players who were more than sniffing around the process that was being run around Apprenda," he continued. "I think Sinclair Schuller did a great job, but he didn't ultimately get the company to a sale point."

Apprenda "would have needed ... to continue to develop technology and try to catch back up," Sisko said. "The collective view around the table (was) that it wasn't appropriate to plow more capital into this opportunity."

miszler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5018 • @madisoniszler