Circle Raises $222 Million From BlackRock and Apollo in Arc Token Presale
Circle Internet Group raised $222 million in the presale of a token tied to its new Arc blockchain on May 11, giving the network a fully diluted valuation of $3 billion. Investors included BlackRock, Apollo Global Management, Andreessen Horowitz‘s crypto arm, and Bullish.
The raise positions Arc as a purpose-built payment rail for high-frequency, machine-to-machine transactions. It is the largest single fundraise by a stablecoin issuer in 2026.
What Circle Raised and Who Paid
A CNBC report published May 11 put the fully diluted network valuation at $3 billion, with the presale covering ARC tokens before any public listing.
CoinDesk reported that Bullish also participated alongside the three headline investors. Circle confirmed the raise did not include retail investors.
No listing date for the ARC token has been set.
Circle is the issuer of USD Coin (USDC), the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in January 2026 under the ticker CRCL after a multi-year effort to list via SPAC and direct listing routes.
Circle also separately launched Agent Stack on May 11, a suite of AI infrastructure tools enabling gas-free USDC transfers as small as $0.000001.
What Arc Is Built to Do
Arc is designed as a blockchain optimized for agentic payments, meaning automated, high-frequency payments between software agents rather than human users. Stablecoins, cryptocurrency assets designed to maintain a fixed value against a reference asset such as the U.S. dollar, are the primary settlement currency on the network.
Circle’s Agent Stack infrastructure integrates directly with Arc, offering wallets and a developer marketplace for AI payment applications.
The $3 billion valuation for Arc is separate from Circle’s public-market capitalization as an operating company. Arc is structured as an independent network with its own native token, a design similar to how Coinbase structured its Base network without issuing a separate token.
Background
Circle has positioned itself at the intersection of regulated finance and blockchain infrastructure since launching USDC in 2018 alongside Coinbase (COIN).
The stablecoin grew to more than $60 billion in circulation by early 2026. BlackRock’s participation in the Arc presale follows the asset manager’s broader push into tokenized assets, which includes its own BUIDL money-market fund running on Ethereum (ETH).
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