Circle Internet Group has raised $222 million in a presale for ARC, the token that will power its new blockchain network, Arc. This move takes the company well beyond its usual stablecoin business.
The fundraising valued the Arc network at about $3 billion and drew big institutional investors like BlackRock, Apollo, ARK Invest, Standard Chartered Ventures, and a16z Crypto. News of the funding pushed Circle’s shares higher as investors welcomed the company’s broader blockchain plans.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said Arc is more than just a payments network. He called it a foundational layer for future internet finance. Allaire said Circle wants to build an “operating system” for the digital economy, where contracts, payments, governance, and AI-driven activity all happen on-chain.
The company said Arc is mainly for institutional finance and aims to fix infrastructure problems found on public blockchains used by big financial firms. Circle thinks the network could eventually reduce its reliance on third-party platforms like Ethereum and Solana, where USDC now operates.
This project is part of a bigger trend in the crypto industry. Many companies are moving away from businesses that depend on crypto price swings and are trying to build more stable, infrastructure-based revenue models.
Circle also introduced new tools to help developers build AI agents that can manage payments and online transactions using USDC. Allaire said that in the future, digital economies will be run more by software agents than by people alone.
This fundraising is also notable because Circle is the first publicly listed company to hold a token presale of this size. It shows that token-based fundraising is making a comeback as US regulations become more crypto-friendly.
Source: X.com
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