BlackRock eyes 10% stake in Circle ahead of IPO
Investors sell big in Circle IPO; BlackRock joins in
According to Bloomberg, investment giant BlackRock, which participated in Circle’s $400 million Series F funding round, plans to acquire a 10% stake in the stablecoin issuer during its IPO.
According to the updated IPO prospectus, Circle intends to sell 9.6 million shares, while existing shareholders will sell 14.4 million shares. CEO Jeremy Allaire, who co-founded Circle in 2013, is set to sell about 8% of his stake. Former co-founder Sean Neville and CFO Jeremy Fox-Geen are each expected to sell around 11%.
CNBC reports that venture investors such as Accel, Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, IDG Capital, and Oak Investment Partners are planning to sell about 10% of their holdings. Notably, CNBC points out that it is uncommon for tech IPOs when shareholders sell more shares than the company itself.
Longstanding partnership and joint projects
BlackRock is a current partner of Circle and has become increasingly active in the crypto space. In 2022, it joined Circle’s $401 million funding round at a valuation of $8.05 billion. That same year, Circle appointed BlackRock to manage part of its USDC reserve fund.
Circle also developed a smart contract for the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), the largest tokenized Treasury fund, allowing holders to redeem shares via Circle for USDC.
Circle is the issuer of USDC, the second-largest stablecoin, backed by dollar-denominated assets, including a significant share of interest-bearing U.S. Treasury securities. According to regulatory filings, Circle earned a net income of $155.7 million on $1.68 billion in revenue in 2024, down from $267.5 million in net income on $1.45 billion in revenue the previous year.
Previously, Coinbase and Ripple had expressed interest in acquiring Circle, but the company stated it is not considering such offers and is committed to going fully public.
As we wrote, Circle files for IPO on NYSE under CRCL ticker, seeks to raise $624 million
