Blockchain development consortium R3 CEV LLC has raised $107 million as part of an initial two tranches of a Series A funding.

The investors are a veritable Who’s Who of financial institutions, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, plus 30 others with Intel Corp. participating as well.

The round was initially aiming to raise $200 million but was downgraded to $150 million after number of members walked away from the consortium in November, ostensibly thanks to a dispute about how the funds would be used. Those choosing not to participate included Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Spanish bank Banco Santander SA, Morgan Stanley and Australian financial services provider National Australia Bank. The $150 million target has not yet been reached, but a third tranche of the Series A offering will be offered later this year to both R3 members and non-R3 institutional investors.

Founded in 2015, R3 works as a consortium of more than 80 global financial institutions and tech companies that collaborate on research, experimentation, design and engineering with an aim of delivering advanced state-of-the-art enterprise-scale shared ledger solutions that also meet banking requirements for security, reliability, performance, scalability and audit. That research has led to the development of the Corda distributed ledger platform, a financial-grade ledger that is claimed to meet the highest standards of the banking industry yet is applicable to any commercial scenario.

“You are going to begin to see the roll out of the enterprise-grade Corda platform. You will see the beginning of the network standing up – connecting investors and members on nodes on the software,” R3 Managing Director Charley Cooper told CNBC. “What is of more interest is that we are partnering with various different companies around the world to build applications to be sold to the world for real-world applications that will be out by the end of the year.”

Not surprisingly, R3 intends to use the new funds to accelerate technology development and expand strategic partnerships for product deployment, in particular with a focus on Corda. Part of the acceleration will be additional employees with the consortium looking to expand on its 110 employees in nine offices globally.

“Having been an active part of the R3 journey from the very start, it is rewarding to see the initiative and the technology taking shape,” Hyder Jaffrey, head of strategic investment and fintech innovation at UBS Investment Bank, said in a separate statement. “From the outset, market-wide engagement has always been a key factor to realize the benefits of this technology for both our markets and clients. R3 is now uniquely positioned to deliver on this promise.”

Image: R3