Circle, the issuing company of the USDC stablecoin, announced this Monday, May 11, 2026 that it has raised $222 million through the pre-sale of ARC, the native token of its new institutional network of the same name.
The announcement occurred within the framework of the presentation of the financial results of the company’s first quarter. This success was based on the support of large global financial players, with the firm a16z crypto leading the round with a $75 million commitment.
Powerful entities such as BlackRock, Apollo Funds, Intercontinental Exchange, SBI Group and ARK Invest, among other venture capital funds, participated alongside them.
The fundraising gives Arc a fully diluted network valuation of $3 billiona figure that reflects the market’s confidence in the network that Circle has developed since the project was presented initially on August 12, 2025.
Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, highlighted the relevance of the project for the technological future. “With the pre-sale of the ARC token, the momentum of the Arc network and the launch of our Agent Stack platform, we are building a reliable infrastructure for economic activity based on AI and a more programmable internet financial system,” said the manager. Arc is a public network designed specifically for institutional finance, which uses USDC as its native gas tokenthat is, the asset used to pay transaction processing fees within the network.
The development of this ecosystem has followed a precise schedule. On April 2, Circle confirmed that Arc will be resistant to quantum computing at the launch of the main network, introducing a post-quantum signature scheme to protect digital wallets from future computing advances. Later, on April 14, the Arc token was unveiled during a corporate event held in Seoul, South Korea, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
Although the token cannot yet be traded on exchanges, there are already repercussions on the stock price of Circle (CRCL). This opened the day today down to $105 after the quarterly report was released, but it rebounded later until reaching 115 dollars.
The convergence between Silicon Valley venture capital and Wall Street heavyweights poses a new scenario for the adoption of cryptocurrency networks in the corporate sector. With the technical architecture already defined and financial support assured, the advancement of this institutional network marks a turning point in the integration of digital assets within the regulatory framework of publicly traded companies.