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Circle Internet Financial announced earlier this year its moves in agentic commerce, and now the stablecoin giant says its combined venture in both AI and digital assets is gaining altitude fast. “We believe we are going through the biggest platform shift in the history of the Internet,” said Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s chief executive, in discussing his company’s first-quarter results early Monday.
It has been a busy quarter for the New York City-based company as it lays plans to expand on its earlier introduction of a new stablecoin platform, Arc. “We expect Arc will be the best infrastructure for payments in stablecoins,” Allaire said, “and we have designed Arc with asset issuers as central.”
The Arc platform will also play a central role in Circle’s venture into agentic commerce, in which bits of code scour the Internet to locate and, if authorized, buy products on behalf of users. That AI effort stems from recent developments in technology, Allaire said in discussing his company’s launch of its Circle Agent Stack. “The explosion in agent technology has just happened in the last couple of months,” Allaire said. “And if you’re a platform company like Circle, it’s very clear agentic automation is going to be central. So we’ve made that a huge priority at Circle.”
Indeed, he added “some meaningful portion of activity is agent-driven already,” though he stopped short of quantifying that portion.
Nor does the company entertain conservative notions about the room for expansion in this business. “The agentic economy is where the entire economy is heading,” Allaire predicted. “So we’re positioning USDC and Arc to take advantage of that.” Circle’s stablecoin, USDC, is the world’s second largest, with nearly $80 billion in circulation. Circle expects to launch Arc commercially this summer, following tests that began in October. A presale early Monday of Arc tokens took in $222 million, valuing the Arc network at $3 billion, according to news reports.
Circle is also looking forward to getting an assist from pending legislation. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives last summer, is now tied up in the Senate, with wrangling over anti-money-laundering provisions and other matters. While Allaire said Circle “is not waiting for Congress to act,” he said the bill would be “incredibly helpful for us,” as it “allows legal certainty to start dealing in and using digital assets at scale.” The bill’s Title 4, he pointed out, “specifically address stablecoin use cases.”
For the quarter, Circle reported total revenue and reserve income of $694 million, up 20% year-over-year. The total value of stablecoins in circulation grew 32%, to $274 billion. Revenue less transaction and other costs came to $287 million, up 24%.
