PANews reported on October 24 that according to Bloomberg, people familiar with the matter revealed that R3, a New York-based blockchain startup, has held preliminary discussions with representatives of Ava Labs, Solana Foundation and Adhara. These discussions have been going on for at least six months, and the discussions include a variety of options such as joint ventures, minority stake sales or outright sales. People familiar with the matter said that although its Corda technology is used by multiple real-time platforms such as the Swiss Stock Exchange's digital asset trading platform, some projects have not entered the testing phase. The company laid off about one-fifth of its employees a year ago and currently has 200 to 250 employees.
Founded in 2014, R3 is one of the earliest and hottest startups focused on developing blockchain-based systems for banks and other financial companies. It initially led a consortium of large banks focused on building blockchain systems that could run some of the most complex processes. Some initial members, such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley, withdrew from the consortium starting in 2016 as R3 began seeking external funding, according to news reports at the time. R3 raised $122 million from more than 40 institutions in a round of financing completed in 2018, with investors including Barclays, UBS Group and Wells Fargo. The company considered going public as early as 2018.
