Circle closes $222 million from BlackRock, Apollo for Arc blockchain
Circle Internet Group According to information obtained by CNBC, the company raised $ 222 million from the pre-sale of Arc, the native token of its new blockchain, as it plans to expand beyond its main business, the USDC stablecoin.
Andreessen Horowitz served as lead investor in the raise, investing $75 million. Among other investors Black RockApollo Funds, parent company of the New York Stock Exchange Intercontinental ExchangeSBI Group, Janus Henderson Investors, Standard Chartered Ventures, General Catalyst, Marshall Wace, ARK Invest, IDG Capital, Haun Ventures and owner of crypto exchange and CoinDesk Rise.
The raise gives Arc a fully diluted network valuation of $3 billion.
“[Blockchain] Infrastructure is becoming as important as mobile operating systems or cloud platforms, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told CNBC in an exclusive interview. “We want to create an operating system that has multiple stakeholders in it…large companies that run the infrastructure with us and ultimately help manage it.”
“We are becoming a broader internet platform company,” Allaire added. “We’re getting into the operating system business, and we’re doing that by building this multi-stakeholder distributed model with a token, a distributed network. But it’s an operating system business. We’re also getting into the application business.”
Arc is a public blockchain designed for corporate finance. Allaire emphasized that this is more than stablecoins and payments, noting that it can “drive the real economy.”
“The economy is not just a representation of values, it is every contract that supports these financial relationships…it is the systems of governance that we use to manage all of these economic institutions,” Allaire said.
As a 25% shareholder of Arc’s initial 10 billion token offering, Circle can participate in the operation of the validator infrastructure, generate new fee revenue, and generate staking revenue. The majority of tokens (60 percent) will go to participants who develop, use and contribute to the Arc network. The remaining 15 percent will be reserved for long-term reserves.
Allaire said investors should keep an eye on transactions, asset issuances and success on the network as the developer community finds it.
He added that the economy is becoming increasingly machine-run, with AI agents taking over many of the operational and contractual jobs currently managed by humans.
“We are entering this period where software machines will power the economic system,” he said. “Software will do most of the work; that’s what AI agents represent.”
The company also introduced a number of services and tools designed to help developers create AI agents that can manage transactions, access online services, and make payments using USDC.
Positioning for a more competitive market
Circle’s passion for Arc reflects the existential shift other crypto companies are facing: They need to move beyond businesses built around the speculative cycles of cryptocurrencies in crypto’s early days and evolve into more resilient businesses with more stable and more diversified revenues.
“As USDC becomes the trusted digital dollar for banks, corporations and finance
There is a problem for institutions looking for the speed of crypto without the volatility. The internet infrastructure that USDC operates on today was not built with large institutions in mind. It was built for individuals and crypto enthusiasts. This is where Arc comes in,” a16z crypto wrote in a blog post Monday morning.
If Arc is successful, it could allow Circle to own more of the infrastructure on which its flagship USDC stablecoin runs. Today USDC relies heavily on networks such as Ethereum and Solana for payment and distribution partners. coinbase.
Enterprise is as much about defense as it is about growth. While regulations supporting stablecoins, including the GENIUS Act signed into law last year and the STABLE Act, which will receive a first vote in the Senate Banking Committee this week, legitimize them, some investors worry that banks and fintechs could launch their own competing dollar tokens, eliminating the need for a third-party issuer.
On-chain capital increase
Circle is the first publicly traded company to engage in token pre-sale, which is the early sale of digital tokens before a blockchain project is officially launched.
Crypto companies love token sales for their ability to raise large amounts of capital and build an early community of users. They are often likened to IPOs, as both represent public fundraising mechanisms that result in a transferable financial interest.
Token sales, also known as “initial coin offerings” or ICOs, became infamous for their role in fueling the crypto peak in 2017; During this period, the market grew so rapidly that projects were launched with little oversight, leading to some high-profile failures and scams.
The landscape has changed dramatically since then. Under the Trump administration’s more crypto-friendly regulatory stance, the Securities and Exchange Commission is increasingly focusing on creating frameworks for compliant tokenized securities and on-chain capital formation, creating conditions that could encourage the return of ICO-style fundraising to a more mature and sustainable structure.
“This is a big change in how stakeholders can participate in the growth of networks,” Allaire said. “Every company in the world will eventually be tokenized, meaning your shares will be tokenized too… [and] You will use digital tokens as mechanisms for interaction with your customers and stakeholders.”
