Blockchain consortium R3 raises US$107m to fund financial distributed ledger infrastructure
Financial technology innovator R3 has completed the first two of three tranches in its Series A fundraising round, securing US$107 million in the world's largest distributed ledger technology (DLT) investment to date.
R3 is the largest consortium of global financial institutions collaborating to develop a platform and commercial applications for DLT.
R3's globally diverse group of investors represents an equal geographical split across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas, counting over 40 participants from over 15 countries.
Investors include major banks worldwide such as Bank of America, Barclays, Nordea, BNP Paribas Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Societe Generale, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Wells Fargo, and Westpac.
R3 CEO David E. Rutter says: "Many of the world's largest financial firms have come together not just with capital support, but with a robust commitment to work with R3 in developing industry solutions that will be the building blocks of the new financial services infrastructure.
"We've got unparalleled momentum.
The first two tranches of the Series-A round were made available only to R3 members, while the third and final tranche – which opens later this year – will be accessible to R3 members and non-R3 institutional investors.
R3 will use the funds to accelerate technology development and expand strategic partnerships for product deployment.
The company's efforts will be focused on Corda, R3's DLT platform for regulated financial institutions, and its infrastructure network, which will support a vast range of partner-built financial applications that interoperate seamlessly with each other, existing systems and networks.
"R3 has proven the collaborative model can successfully drive innovation in financial services to a degree never before seen," says Rutter.
Since the launch of its DLT initiative in September 2015, R3 has grown from a staff of eight finance and technology veterans with nine bank members to a global team of over 110 professionals serving over 80 global financial institutions and regulators on six continents.
The company's work is further supported by over 2,000 technology, financial, and legal experts drawn from its global member base.
That base includes banks, clearing houses, exchanges, market infrastructure providers, asset managers, central banks, conduct regulators, trade associations, professional services firms and technology companies.
"In the space of less than two years, we have built a network of over 80 members, launched an open source distributed ledger platform specifically for wholesale financial markets, conducted over 60 detailed use cases across a variety of asset classes, led the way in regulatory engagement on behalf of the broader DLT community and are ahead of schedule for initial commercial deployments this year," Rutter says.
"We are on our way to becoming a new operating system for financial services.