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Circle Internet Group, the publicly traded company behind the USDC stablecoin, has raised $222 million in a presale for the native token of its new Arc blockchain, valuing the network at $3 billion on a fully diluted basis, CNBC reported Monday.
Andreessen Horowitz led the round with a $75 million commitment. Other participants include BlackRock, Apollo Funds, Intercontinental Exchange (parent of the New York Stock Exchange), Standard Chartered Ventures, Janus Henderson, ARK Invest, and about half a dozen more.
Circle is the first publicly listed company to conduct a token presale, an early sale of digital tokens before a blockchain goes live. The company generated nearly $2.75 billion in revenue during fiscal 2025.
“We’re entering the operating system business,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told CNBC, “and we’re doing it by building this multi-stakeholder distributed model with a token, with a distributed network.”
USDC’s transaction volume and market position
USDC recorded $2.2 trillion in on-chain transactions, overtaking Tether’s USDT and its $1.3 trillion for the first time since 2019. The coin’s market cap hit $77.85 billion as of early 2026, up 73% through 2025 alone. The broader stablecoin market grew from $205 billion at the start of 2025 to over $318 billion by May 2026.
USDC currently settles primarily on Ethereum and Solana, networks Circle doesn’t control. Distribution depends heavily on partners like Coinbase.
What Arc is and how it works
Arc is built for institutional finance, with compliance and speed at its core. Its public testnet, which launched on October 28, 2025, processed over 150 million transactions in its first 90 days. Average settlement time: half a second.
Of Arc’s initial supply of 10 billion tokens, 60% is earmarked for participants who build on, use, and contribute to the network. Circle retains 25%, which lets the company run validator infrastructure, earn staking income, and generate fee revenue, a new business line entirely separate from the reserve income that currently accounts for roughly 96% of its top line. The remaining 15% goes to a long-term reserve.
Regulatory context
The GENIUS Act was signed into law last year, and the STABLE Act is set for an initial vote in the Senate Banking Committee this week. Regulatory clarity legitimizes Circle’s core product and opens the door for traditional banks to launch competing tokens.
A16z crypto wrote in a blog post that while USDC has become the trusted digital dollar for institutions seeking speed without volatility, “the internet infrastructure which USDC runs on today wasn’t built with big institutions in mind. It was built for individuals and crypto enthusiasts. That’s where Arc comes in.”
Circle’s history and revenue problem
Founded in 2013, Circle spent years pivoting between consumer payments, crypto trading, and stablecoin issuance before finding its footing with USDC. Its IPO in June 2025 was notably undersubscribed, raising approximately $1.15 billion.
Reserve income generated $2.636 billion of the company’s $2.747 billion in FY2025 revenue. By moving into blockchain infrastructure, validator fees, and developer ecosystem revenue, Circle is trying to build recurring income streams beyond that single source.
The company also unveiled tools for developers building AI agents that can manage transactions and make payments using USDC, a bet that the intersection of artificial intelligence and on-chain finance will shape the next decade of financial services.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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