Circle Raises $222M From BlackRock and Apollo for Arc Blockchain
Circle Internet Group has closed a $222 million presale for ARC, the native token of its new Circle Arc blockchain, signalling the company’s boldest push yet to grow beyond its USDC stablecoin roots.
Andreessen Horowitz led the investment, with BlackRock, Apollo Funds, and Intercontinental Exchange among roughly a dozen financial heavyweights that participated in the presale. The raise gives the Arc network a fully diluted valuation of $3 billion.
Other backers include ARK Invest, Bullish, General Catalyst, Haun Ventures, IDG Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Marshall Wace, SBI Group, and Standard Chartered Ventures.
Circle’s Bigger Ambitions
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire made clear this is not just a capital raise. “We’re entering the operating system business and we’re doing it by building this multi-stakeholder distributed model with a token, with a distributed network and we’re also getting into the apps business,” Allaire told CNBC exclusively.
The Circle Arc blockchain designed to address real business needs that existing chains fail to meet. Unlike most blockchains where fees are paid in volatile native tokens, Arc uses USDC as its gas token, making transaction costs stable and predictable far more aligned with how traditional finance companies expect payments to work.
Arc’s public testnet has processed more than 150 million transactions since launching in October 2025. The network has attracted more than 100 institutional participants, including BlackRock, Visa, Goldman Sachs, and Amazon Web Services.
Notably, the Circle Arc blockchain will also launch with quantum-resistant features, giving users a practical path to create wallets that can withstand future quantum computing threats a significant step ahead of legacy crypto infrastructure.
With this raise, Circle positions the Arc blockchain not just as another Layer-1, but as financial infrastructure for the next era of global payments and institutional finance.
