Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire on Arc, the Future of Quantum and the Agentic Economy

—Courtesy Circle Circle is known to many as the issuer of the $74 billion digital currency USD Coin, or USDC.

But co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire believes the company’s latest launch may be the “most consequential major platform launch” in its history.

“Arc is built from the ground up for what the financial system needs: fees paid in dollars, settlement that is final in under a second, confidentiality with compliance built in, and operators that boards and regulators can trust,” Allaire wrote in a recent email.

Allaire likens the Arc blockchain and full-stack platform, launched on Sept.

16, to an Android operating system for the global economy, facilitating payments, lending, trading, and even, one day, commerce between AI agents.

“Humans tolerated money that sleeps on weekends; machines will not,” he says.

The platform has more than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders including global banks, asset management firms, payment networks, exchanges, and AI platforms.

Its founding validators include BlackRock, Standard Chartered, Mastercard, Visa and Intercontinental Exchange.

Allaire, who co-founded Circle 13 years ago, is a serial entrepreneur.

Before his work on stablecoins , he founded cloud-based online video platform Brightcove, and before that, software company Allaire Corporation with his brother, which was acquired by Macromedia in the early aughts.

He spoke with TIME in June, ahead of the launch of Arc.

How are you thinking about the different regulatory environments in all the markets that you're operating in? Blockchain networks are just technology services.

They're soft, open software protocols that run on the internet.

They're general purpose computers, and so general purpose computers and network protocols are themselves not regulated activities.