Circle reported $694 million in Q1 revenue and on the same day unveiled Agent Stack, a financial infrastructure suite built for AI agents, while also disclosing that the Arc blockchain token presale had raised $222 million. Even though quarterly revenue came in below Wall Street expectations of $715 million, Circle shares still climbed 15.91% to $131.76. The move shifted market attention toward the intersection of AI agents and USDC-based payment rails.
Agent Stack targets autonomous USDC usage by AI agents
Circle’s new Agent Stack includes five modules: Agent Wallets, Agent Marketplace, Circle CLI, Nanopayments, and Circle Skills. Access is now live through agents.circle.com. The product is designed to let AI agents hold and move USDC within spending policies defined by human operators, turning payment execution into part of automated software workflows.
The most closely watched component is Nanopayments. Powered by Circle Gateway, it enables gas-free, high-frequency USDC transfers with a minimum payment size of just $0.000001. The system supports 11 EVM chains, including Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, and Polygon PoS. Buyers first deposit USDC into a Gateway Wallet contract, then authorize later requests through off-chain EIP-3009 signatures, with Gateway batching settlement on-chain to keep transaction costs close to zero.
On the earnings call, CEO Jeremy Allaire said, “AI platforms and economic operating systems are rapidly converging into a new generation of internet infrastructure.” That comment aligned closely with the messaging behind the launch.
Arc token presale adds another catalyst
A second driver for the stock reaction was the Arc blockchain token presale. According to the source material, the sale reached $222 million at a fully diluted valuation of $3 billion, with a16z crypto leading $75 million. Other named participants included BlackRock, Apollo, ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, and ARK Invest.
The report also said Circle is the first U.S. company to carry out a token presale after going public. Paired with the Agent Stack release, that development helped redirect market focus away from the revenue miss and toward Circle’s position in stablecoins, on-chain payments, and AI-agent infrastructure.
x402 activity spills into small-cap token moves
Agent Stack also integrates x402, a protocol led by Coinbase that revives the long-dormant HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code. The idea is to let AI agents attach USDC payment signatures automatically when requesting API resources. As of the end of April, x402 had processed more than 75 million transactions and settled about $24 million, with 99.8% of volume denominated in USDC, according to the source.
That narrative spilled into token trading. Meridian (MRDN), described as one of the early x402 integrations, rallied sharply after Circle’s official account reposted a message saying the service was available on Meridian. Its 24-hour gain briefly exceeded 160%, bringing FDV to about $28.7 million. Other x402-linked small-cap tokens also moved higher, with PAYAI up 334% over seven days and PING up 42% in the same period. The source added that liquidity in these tokens remains limited, while circulating supply is still a key question.