Circle Internet Group has raised $22m from presale of Arc, the native token of the blockchain that the fintech and stablecoin issuer intends to launch.
A native token is a cryptocurrency created directly on a blockchain, used to power transactions and operations within that network. In its first quarter results call on 11 May 2026, Circle said it had raised $222m from the presale, which values the network for its Arc blockchain at $3bn.
The consortium of investors who bought the token included a16z crypto, Apollo Funds, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Bullish, General Catalyst, Haun Ventures, Intercontinental Exchange, IDG Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Marshall Wace, SBI Group, and Standard Chartered Ventures.
Jeremy Allaire, co-founder, chief executive and chairman at Circle, said in the results statement that Circle’s first quarter reflected strong execution against a much bigger opportunity: the rapid convergence of AI platforms and economic operating systems into a new internet stack. Allaire added: “With the ARC token presale, momentum behind the Arc network, and the launch of our Agent Stack, we are building trusted infrastructure for AI-native economic activity and a more programmable internet financial system.”
a16zcrypto said in a blog that it had invested $75m in the ARC token as the venture capital firm believes Arc will be one of the handful of blockchain networks that will emerge as the new backbone of the financial system.
“At the center of this shift is Circle and its USDC stablecoin,” added a16zcrypto. “Circle’s relationships with banks, payment networks, and corporate treasuries have steadily turned USDC into one of the major units of account in parts of the financial system that crypto hasn’t yet reached.”
Arc economic operating system
In a white paper on the Arc network, Circle argued that the internet needs a true economic operating system, shared infrastructure and a native way to coordinate participants
Circle compared the current state of the digital asset ecosystem to the beginning of the mobile phone industry. There were numerous incompatible platforms with their own rules, tooling, and economics, and the industry realised that a standard operating system (OS) was required so that all participants could build and interoperate.
“Today’s economic system still resembles computing before shared operating systems,” said Circle. “Payments, lending, capital markets, and settlement run across closed systems built decades ago, each with its own intermediaries and constraints.”
Arc is a public Layer-1 blockchain which has been built to provide the economic operating system for the internet. Circle described Arc as a shared platform built for real-world economic activity, combining stablecoin-native fees, deterministic sub-second finality, configurable privacy, and direct integration with ecosystem applications, including Circle’s full-stack platform for use cases across payments, lending, FX, and capital markets.
The ARC token is designed to address network coordination.
“As the network expands to include validators, builders, liquidity providers, exchanges, institutions, and end users, it needs a durable mechanism that can align them around shared outcomes,” added Circle. “In this model, the system separates into three layers: the network as the execution environment, stablecoins as the transactional medium, with the ARC token as the coordination mechanism.”
Circle said ARC token holders would be able to vote on economic parameters that directly affect participation in the network giving them meaningful authority over shaping the economic rules that matter most, while preserving a focused governance model designed to support stability, clarity, and long-term network health.
In October last year Circle launched Arc in a public test environment. The firm said in a statement that banks, asset managers, and insurers experimenting on Arc included Absa, Bank Frick, BlackRock Inc, BTG Pactual, Clearbank, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank, FirstRand, Fiserv, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Invesco, Kyobo Life, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Société Générale, and WisdomTree.
“Their early exploration and contributions will help enable Arc to deliver on the promise of a new internet financial system with robust day-one tools, infrastructure, applications, and utility,” added Circle.
a16zcrypto described Arc as a new open economic operating system, where treasury teams at some of the largest corporations in the world can budget, in dollars, against their own balance sheet, where settlement happens in under a second, privacy is configurable and validators are known institutional operators with contractual obligations.
“Arc will launch with a distinct advantage: the dominance of USDC, its own products deployed natively on Arc from day one, and a suite of over 200 partners who have contributed to its design, including Goldman Sachs, Visa, and Mastercard, and that span DeFi, payments, fintechs, and asset managers,” added a16zcrypto.
