Circle launches Agent Stack for AI use of USDC; raises $222M
Circle launched Agent Stack so AI agents can open wallets, make USDC micropayments down to $0.000001 and hire services. Circle raised $222M in an Arc presale valuing Arc at $3B.
On Monday, Circle introduced Agent Stack, a set of developer tools that lets AI agents open wallets, hold and spend USDC, make micropayments as small as $0.000001, and contract services autonomously. The company also announced a $222 million presale of its Arc token that values Arc at $3 billion.
Agent Stack includes agent wallets, a command-line interface, an agent marketplace, and a nanopayments protocol. Circle said the nanopayments protocol can process very small USDC transfers quickly and without gas fees, a capability meant for high-frequency machine-to-machine payments that traditional banking rails cannot support due to size and frequency limits.
Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s co-founder and CEO, wrote in a statement that financial systems were built for human users with manual onboarding and approvals and are not set up for software acting on its own. He added the company expects agents to be primary users of the new infrastructure and described Agent Stack as a full suite for agent-driven use.
The agent marketplace is designed so AI programs can discover, contract and pay other software services programmatically, operating on USDC and compatible blockchains. Circle said intended use cases include high-frequency micropayments and automated procurement of SaaS components.
The Arc presale raised $222 million and was led by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz with a $75 million commitment. Institutional investors including BlackRock and Apollo Funds also participated. Circle stated the presale implies a $3 billion fully diluted valuation for Arc.
Circle reported $77 billion in USDC in circulation at the end of the first quarter, a 28 percent increase year over year. The company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL, saw its shares rise to $131.76 on the day of the announcements, a near 16 percent gain; the stock has climbed about 50 percent over the past month.
Circle published technical materials on Arc and its stablecoin-focused blockchain and released quarterly financial results alongside the product and token announcements.
Other companies have rolled out or are developing agent-focused payments and stablecoin infrastructure, including initiatives involving Amazon with Coinbase and Stripe, a Google Cloud collaboration with the Solana Foundation, and projects from MoonPay.
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