Join the Internet Group has raised $222 million in the sale of Arc, the native token for its new blockchain, as the company looks to expand beyond its core USDC stablecoin issuance business, CNBC has learned.
The raise gives Arc a fully diluted net worth of $3 billion.
“[Blockchain] infrastructure is becoming more important like mobile apps or cloud platforms,” Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told CNBC in an exclusive interview. “We want to build a multi-stakeholder app … big companies that own the infrastructure with us and help ultimately manage it.”
“We’re becoming a comprehensive Internet platform company,” Allaire added. “We’re getting into the operating system business and we’re doing it by building this tokenized, multi-stakeholder distributed model, with a distributed network. But it’s an operating system business. And we’re also getting into the applications business.”
Shares of Circle rose more than 2% in trading on Monday, following the funding news and the company’s mixed first-quarter results. Earnings per share of 21 cents beat expectations by 3 cents, based on a survey of LSEG analysts. Revenue of $694 million fell short of the $722 million expected.
In the promotion, Andreessen Horowitz served as the lead investor in the $75 million investment round. Other investors include BlackRockApollo Funds, New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental ExchangeSBI Group, Janus Henderson Investors, Standard Chartered Ventures, General Catalyst, Marshall Wace, ARK Invest, IDG Capital, Haun Ventures and crypto exchange and owner of CoinDesk Bullish.
Arc is a public blockchain designed for institutional finance. Allaire emphasized that it is about more than stablecoins and payments – noting that it “can drive a real economy.”
“The economy is not just the representation of values, it is all the contracts that put down those financial relationships… the governance systems we use to manage all these economic institutions,” said Allaire.
As a 25% shareholder in Arc’s initial supply of 10 billion tokens, the Circle can participate in the infrastructure to ensure performance, generate new revenue and generate income. The majority of tokens, 60%, will go to participants who build, use and contribute to the Arc network. The remaining 15% will be allocated to long-term savings.
Investors should follow transactions, releases and successes in the network that the engineering community has developed, Allaire said.
He added that the economy is becoming increasingly mechanized, with AI agents taking over much of the operational and contractual work currently handled by humans.
“We are entering an era where software machines will run the economic system,” he said. “Software will do most of the work – that’s what AI agents are for.”
The company also unveiled a set of services and tools designed to help developers build AI agents that can manage transactions, access online services and make payments using USDC.
Standing out in a highly competitive marketplace
The ambitions of the circle and Arc reflect the current change that other crypto companies are facing: They need to develop beyond the businesses that were built in the early days of crypto during speculative cycles of hidden funds, and to long-lasting businesses with strong and diversified income.
“While USDC has become the trusted digital dollar for banks, corporations, and finance
institutions that want the speed of crypto without its flexibility, there is still a problem. The Internet infrastructure that USDC operates on today was not built with large institutions in mind. Designed for individuals and crypto enthusiasts. That’s where Arc comes in,” a16z crypto wrote in a blog post Monday morning.
If Arc succeeds, it could allow Circle to own more of the infrastructure for its active USDC stablecoin. Today, USDC is heavily dependent on networks like Ethereum and Solana for hosting and distribution partners. Coinbase.
The move is as much about playing defense as it is about growth. Although legislation supporting stablecoins mandates them – including the GENIUS Act signed into law last year and the CLARITY Act, which is scheduled to receive a first vote this week in the Senate Banking Committee – some investors worry banks and fintechs may launch their own competing dollar tokens, eliminating the need for third-party issuance.
On-chain capital increases
Circle is the first publicly listed company to conduct a token sale – an early sale of digital tokens before a blockchain project is officially launched.
Crypto companies love token sales for their ability to raise capital and build a community of early adopters. They are often compared to IPOs as both represent public-facing fundraising methods that result in transferable financial interest.
Also known as “initial coin offerings,” or ICOs, token sales became famous for their role in fueling the crypto peak of 2017 — when the market grew so fast that projects were launched with little oversight, leading to high-profile failures and scams.
The landscape has changed a lot since then. Under the crypto-friendly regulatory environment of the Trump administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission is focused on establishing compliance frameworks for securities tokens and the creation of on-chain funds, creating conditions that can encourage the return of ICO-style fundraising with a mature and sustainable structure.
“It’s a big change in how stakeholders can participate in the growth of networks,” Allaire said. “All the companies in the world, in time, will be tokenized, which means that your shares will become tokens… [and] you will use digital tokens as a way to communicate with your customers and stakeholders. “
