SoftBank veteran Akshay Naheta in talks to sell stake in his stablecoin payments firm: report

Akshay Naheta is reportedly negotiating the sale of a minority stake in the stablecoin payments startup and plans to use the proceeds to expand the market.

Akshay Naheta, the former SoftBank executive behind some of the company’s biggest deals, is reportedly in early talks to sell a minority stake in the stablecoin payments startup he co-founded, Bloomberg has learned from sources familiar with the matter.

Distributed Technologies Research, which uses blockchain to process stablecoins for cross-border payments, will use the funds to expand into newer markets, including the United States, sources say. Sources say the size of the initial public fundraising and valuation is unclear at this stage as negotiations are being held with multiple strategic investors and venture capital firms.

A DTR spokesperson said the company offers payment and settlement facilities in more than 40 countries and will scale to more than 100 countries next year with transactions worth billions of dollars.

The move comes just months after fintech giant Stripe announced a $1.1 billion deal to acquire stablecoin startup Bridge. Meanwhile, BVNK, a Tiger Global Management-backed stablecoin payments company, is also in early talks to raise $50 million as interest in the sector grows.

Naheta, a former trader at Deutsche Bank AG, has been at the center of some of SoftBank’s biggest deals, Bloomberg reported, noting that he pitched founder Masayoshi Son on the sale of chip designer Arm Holdings to semiconductor designer Nvidia. He added that he also led a $4 billion investment in Nvidia. It made a profit of $3 billion in 2017.

According to information on his website, Naheta will join DTR in 2022 with a group of finance veterans, including Jason Griffith, former global head of equities at Jefferies Financial Group Inc., and Hasan Sabri, former COO of SB Management Ltd. He founded .