Circle Internet Group, the publicly listed issuer of the USDC stablecoin, has raised $222 million through a presale of the native token for its new Arc blockchain, giving the network a fully diluted valuation of $3 billion.
Andreessen Horowitz led the round with a $75 million commitment. Other participants include BlackRock, Apollo Funds, Intercontinental Exchange, Standard Chartered Ventures, Janus Henderson, ARK Invest, and several others.
Circle is the first publicly listed company to conduct a token presale. CEO Jeremy Allaire said Arc represents Circle’s push beyond stablecoins into blockchain infrastructure and internet-scale financial software.
USDC recorded $2.2 trillion in on-chain transactions, overtaking Tether’s USDT for the first time since 2019. The coin’s market cap hit $77.85 billion as of early 2026, up 73% through 2025 alone.
Arc is built for institutional finance, with compliance and speed at its core. Its public testnet processed over 150 million transactions in its first 90 days, with an average settlement time of half a second.
Of Arc’s initial supply of 10 billion tokens, 60% is earmarked for network builders and users, 25% retained by Circle for validator and fee revenue, and the remaining 15% to a long-term reserve. This new business line diversifies Circle away from reserve income, which accounted for roughly 96% of its FY2025 revenue of $2.747 billion.
The company also unveiled tools for developers building AI agents that can manage transactions and make payments using USDC, betting on the intersection of artificial intelligence and on-chain finance.