High Tech Private Equity Fund SICAV plc, an EU regulated investment fund managed by Accuro Fund Solutions, has acquired blockchain pioneer nChain and a group of affiliated companies.

nChain is a leading provider of research and development of blockchain technologies. The acquisition will help nChain continue the growth of its research activities and advance its mission to accelerate blockchain adoption globally. According to the official release, Arthur Davis has been appointed as a Director of nChain Holdings Limited.

"While learning about the suite of nChain's capabilities through the transaction, it became clear to me that we are in a new era of the digital age following the creation of the personal computer and the internet. This changes everything leading us into what we at nChain call the Internet of Transactions. Although undisclosed, we believe the transaction value to be the largest worldwide to date in the development of this industry”, Davis stated. “nChain has designed and architected a blockchain infrastructure to transform people's lives and the way in which businesses operate. We believe this innovative technology will be disruptive on a scale that most people have yet to fully appreciate. nChain sees the full extent of this disruption being achieved by maximising transactional velocity on the Bitcoin blockchain."

nChain is involved in researching and developing tools, protocols, and applications to support blockchain growth worldwide. This includes a software development kit to enable programmers to develop applications on the Bitcoin blockchain, solutions for scalability of the Bitcoin blockchain, inventions to improve security, on-chain scripting for smart contracts and a decentralised trading platform that uses autonomous agents. In addition, the company also advocates for the formation of a neutral standards organisation to coordinate and manage the Bitcoin protocol and technical standards.

In 2017, nChain intends to make some of its intellectual property assets available to the blockchain community through open source software and royalty-free licensing.

"This acquisition is directly aligned with our investment objective of identifying and supporting world-leading disruptive technology innovators.  We were attracted to nChain's core infrastructure capabilities and technical understanding of how a globally scalable enterprise-class architecture can be built to transform the way in which the world operates.  We look forward to supporting the team as they lead blockchain innovation worldwide and make this vision a reality”, Michel Van Zanten, who led the transaction from the investor's point of view, said in a statement. 

The release further stated that Nuovo Capital acted as nChain's financial advisor for the transaction; Global law firm Baker McKenzie advised nChain on tax, IP and corporate aspects of the transaction, and has advised nChain on other corporate matters.