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 his stablecoin payments startup, with plans to use the proceeds for market expansion.

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

Distributed Technologies Research, which uses blockchain to process stablecoins for cross-border payments, is said to use the funds to expand into newer markets, including the U.S., the sources say. 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, the sources say.

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

A former trader at Deutsche Bank AG, Naheta was central to some of SoftBank’s biggest deals, Bloomberg notes, adding that he had pitched founder Masayoshi Son on the sale of chip designer Arm Holdings to semiconductor designer Nvidia 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.