The largest financing in the blockchain industry? R3 CEO said it was completed in the first quarter of 2017

Blockchain startup R3CEV is close to completing the largest funding round ever in the industry, according to its CEO and founder David Rutter.

In initial reports, the company planned to raise $200 million, but later reduced it to 1.5亿美元due to high difficulty. If this figure is achieved, R3 will become the startup with the largest amount of funding in the blockchain industry.

In an interview with reporters, Rutter explained how his company has grown and changed.

Rutter said:

“We will have completed the largest funding round in the industry, with the most market participants, in the first quarter of 2017.”

In preparation for the funding round, Rutter said he plans to relocate from R3’s New York headquarters to R3’s London offices, which are also home to R3’s chief technology officer Richard Gendal Brown and chief engineer James Carlyle.

R3 general manager Charley Cooper confirmed to reporters that the company currently employs more than 100 people in nine different countries, most of whom are in London.

“That’s where the technology development team is,” Cooper said.

As of now, the R3 Alliance has a total of 77 members, many of which are European institutions, including founding members Barclays Bank, BBVA, Credit Suisse, and Commerzbank.

“Our European team members are very active,” Rutter said.

R3’s activities are not limited to New York and London. The alliance currently has offices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

Overcoming obstacles

In its initial stages, R3 continued to announce financial institutions joining the alliance, and by the end of last year, R3 had achieved significant milestones, but it also encountered many obstacles along the way.

The company launched its Corda distributed ledger technology platform in April and open-sourced it in December.

However, by the end of the year, some influential early members of the alliance chose to leave.

Despite the difficulties, R3CEV has remained on track, revealing earlier this week that it has taken on an advisory role in building the distributed ledger infrastructure of post-trade settlement platform DTCC.

Rutter concluded:

"We have a lot of work to do and we've had some setbacks along the way in terms of getting the right mix of people in the league together. But when we get those things done, I think it's absolutely important to celebrate."