Circle presented its Agent Stack at UC Berkeley's Agentic AI Summit this week, advancing its most explicit case to date that USDC — the US dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Circle and the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization — should serve as the default medium of exchange in an emerging economy where AI agents transact autonomously, without human oversight.

The Agent Stack, which initially launched on May 11, provides developers with infrastructure to build autonomous AI systems equipped with programmable USDC wallets. The toolkit represents Circle's strategic push into the intersection of blockchain-based payments and artificial intelligence, two sectors increasingly converging as AI systems require reliable, programmable settlement rails. The move places Circle among a growing field of crypto and fintech firms building payment infrastructure specifically designed for autonomous agents — a category that has gained traction as AI orchestration frameworks now enable models to initiate and complete real-world actions.

Core Components of the Agent Stack

Circle's Agent Stack comprises three primary components:

• Agent Wallets: Each AI system receives its own programmable USDC wallet, enabling self-directed transactions.
• Agent Marketplace: A network connecting AI systems to external services and counterparties.
• Circle Gateway: The settlement layer underpinning transactions, including nanopayments as granular as $0.000001.

The nanopayment capability is particularly relevant for AI use cases, where agents may need to cover per-token API fees, per-second compute costs, or micro-priced data queries — amounts too small for traditional payment rails such as credit cards, which typically carry minimum transaction fees that would dwarf such charges.

During the summit, Circle demonstrated a practical workflow illustrating the stack's capabilities. An AI agent autonomously purchased a phone number for 5 USDC, initiated a voice call, and settled the call cost at 0.133 USDC — all executed without any human intervention at any stage of the process.

Nikhil Chandhok, Circle's Chief Product and Technology Officer, addressed attendees at the Berkeley event, outlining the company's vision for what he termed the "Agentic Economy" — a marketplace where machines transact with machines using programmable digital currency.

The Agentic AI Summit drew over 5,000 attendees and featured a global livestream, underscoring the growing interest in autonomous AI systems and their economic infrastructure.

ARC Token and the Arc Network

Beyond the Agent Stack, Circle conducted a $222 million ARC token presale, which valued the Arc network at approximately $3 billion. The Arc network is designed to complement the Agent Stack by supplying programmable settlement mechanisms for digital transactions, further expanding Circle's footprint in machine-to-machine payment infrastructure.

The token presale signals notable investor appetite at the intersection of AI and blockchain payments, an area that continues to develop alongside ongoing regulatory deliberations in the United States and other jurisdictions over how stablecoins and token-based infrastructure should be governed.

Together, the Agent Stack and Arc network represent Circle's broader ambition to establish USDC as the foundational settlement asset for autonomous AI commerce.