Intel-Backed Blockchain Startup R3 Weighs Options Including a Sale

(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, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing private deliberations. The talks, which have been happening 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 was one of the earliest and buzziest startups to focus on developing blockchain-based systems for banks and other financial firms. It initially led a consortium of large banks focused on building blockchain systems that could run 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 funding starting in 2016, according to news 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.

While its Corda technology is used by several live platforms like the Swiss stock exchanges’s digital-assets venue, some projects did not move beyond the testing phase, the people said. The company fired around a fifth of its workforce a year ago. It now has between 200 and 250 employees, one of the people said.

R3 raised $122 million in a round completed in 2018 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, Pitchbook data show. The company considered going public as early as 2018, Bloomberg News reported at the time.

While blockchain adoption in traditional finance has been slower than expected, the people said, several large firms have continued to express interest in areas such as tokenizing traditional financial assets.

BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest asset manager, in March unveiled its first tokenized mutual fund, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund. The firm is now pushing to have the fund’s native digital token more widely used as collateral for crypto derivatives, Bloomberg News reported this month.

–With assistance from Emily Nicolle and Suvashree Ghosh.