(Bloomberg) — R3, a blockchain company backed by investors including Bank of America Corp. and Intel Corp., is exploring strategic options, including selling itself, people familiar with the matter said.
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The New York-based company has held initial discussions with representatives from Ava Labs, the Solana Foundation and Adhara, the sources, who asked not to be named, said about private deliberations. The negotiations, which have been going on for at least six months, included options ranging from a joint venture to a minority stake sale or an outright sale.
Founded in 2014, R3 has been one of the oldest and fastest growing startups to focus on developing blockchain-based systems for banks and other financial companies. She initially led a consortium of large banks focused on creating blockchain systems capable of running some of their most complex processes. Some initial members, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, left the group as R3 sought external financing starting in 2016, according to reports at the time.
A spokesperson for R3 declined to comment, as did a representative for Adhara. The Solana Foundation and Solana Labs did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Although its Corda technology is used by several live platforms like the Swiss stock exchange’s digital assets platform, some projects have not progressed beyond the testing phase, the sources said. The company laid off about a fifth of its workforce a year ago. It now has between 200 and 250 employees, one of the sources said.
R3 raised $122 million in a 2018 round from more than 40 institutions, according to data provider Pitchbook. Investors in the round – one of the largest ever for a blockchain company at the time – included Barclays Plc, UBS Group AG and Wells Fargo & Co, according to Pitchbook data. The company planned to go public as early as 2018, Bloomberg News reported at the time.
Although the adoption of blockchain in traditional finance has been slower than expected, several large companies have continued to express interest in areas such as tokenizing traditional financial assets.
BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, unveiled its first tokenized mutual fund, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, in March. The company is now pushing for the fund’s native digital token to be more widely used as collateral for crypto derivatives, Bloomberg News reported this month.
