R3CEV is negotiating Series A financing? Rumor has it that its valuation has reached $200 million!

According to people familiar with the matter, New York blockchain startup R3CEV is currently negotiating a Series A funding round. According to an independent report released by Ernst & Young, the current estimated valuation of R3 is $200 million.

Asked about the report, R3 managing director Charley Cooper said the group would not speak publicly about the progress of its funding round.

Cooper confirmed that R3 will meet with its partners in London on Tuesday, and acknowledged that potential funding will be a topic of conversation.

He told CoinDesk:

“The topic of financing is not officially on the agenda, but if someone were to bring it up? It’s certainly possible.”

In addition to potential discussions on funding topics, this week’s London meeting will also discuss solutions to some important issues, including its research work and the newly announced Concord platform.

The group’s product team will also discuss various proofs of concept and applications currently in the incubation stage, and which products will eventually be launched.

Valuing innovative technology companies

Currently, blockchain technology is still a nascent technology, and valuing a blockchain company is obviously a difficult task.

While Cooper wouldn’t discuss any potential funding rounds or give a specific valuation, he said R3 is different from many tech startups and has a lot of things that investors should be interested in.

“We’re not three guys in a garage, we’re not a Silicon Valley startup… We’re in eight cities, we have 80 people, we have 66 client organizations, we’ve prototyped a distributed ledger platform, we’ve got a product in the design phase,” he said.

R3 currently has 66 client institutions, with the latest member being BM&F Bovespa, South America’s largest stock exchange, which signed up last week.

Cooper said that so far, 33 R3 client institutions have confirmed that they will attend the London gathering.

The way forward

At present, R3's financing has not been determined, and its purpose has not been announced. But according to people familiar with the matter, at least part of the money may be used to hire more talents. Because R3's alliance members have expanded to all parts of the world, the company needs to hire more people to work in specific places.

In the past 12 months, the group has grown from 8 employees to 80, with offices spread all over the world. As of now, in addition to its headquarters in New York, R3 has also established offices in San Francisco, London, Japan, Zurich, Singapore, Seoul and Sydney.

This distributed way of working means the group does not need to make large investments in servers, buildings or facilities, which means the company does not need to spend huge amounts of money, Cooper said.