Ex-SoftBank rainmaker Akshay Naheta eyes stake sale in his stablecoin startup

Akshay Naheta, a former SoftBank Group executive known for overseeing some of its biggest deals, is in early talks to sell a minority stake in the stablecoin payments startup he cofounded, according to people familiar with the matter.

Distributed Technologies Research Ltd which uses blockchain to process stablecoins for cross-border payments, will use the funds to expand into newer markets, including the US, the people said, who asked not to be identified as the talks are private. The size of the first public fundraise and valuation is not clear at this stage as it negotiates with multiple strategic investors and venture capital firms, they said.

After a two-year lull following spectacular blowups in the cryptocurrency market, such as FTX, BlockFi Inc., and Three Arrows Capital Ltd., investors are again warming up to the sector. There’s roughly $200 billion worth of stablecoins — a cryptocurrency designed to have a relatively stable price, by being pegged to a commodity or currency — in circulation, according to DefiLlama.

A spokesperson for DTR declined to comment on the fundraising plans. The Zug, Switzerland-based company is offering payout and pay-in facilities in over 40 countries, which will be scaled to over 100 countries next year with billions of dollars in transactions going through it, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

In October, fintech giant Stripe announced a $1.1 billion deal to acquire stablecoin startup Bridge. Tiger Global Management LLC-backed stablecoin payments company BVNK is also in early talks with investors to raise $50 million as excitement over its corner of the crypto market builds, Bloomberg News reported last month.

A former trader at Deutsche Bank AG, Naheta, 43, was central to some of SoftBank’s biggest deals. He pitched founder Masayoshi Son on the sale of chip designer Arm Holdings Plc to semiconductor designer Nvidia Corp. and also led a $4 billion investment in Nvidia in 2017, earning $3 billion in profit.

Naheta co-founded DTR in 2022 alongside a bunch of finance veterans, including Jason Griffith, former global head of equities at Jefferies Financial Group Inc, and Hasan Sabri, former COO at SB Management Ltd., according to information on its website.