Circle Unveils AI Infrastructure for ‘Agentic Economy’ With USDC-Powered Machine Payments

Circle has launched Circle Agent Stack, a financial infrastructure suite for artificial intelligence agents designed to let them hold digital assets, access services and make programmatic payments.

According to Circle’s website on May 11, the stack includes Circle CLI, or command-line interface, Agent Wallet, Agent Marketplace and Nanopayments built on Circle Gateway.

The company said the offering is intended to create an environment where not only developers but AI agents themselves can participate as economic actors. The service is available immediately.

At the core of the stack is machine-to-machine, or M2M, payment infrastructure built around the USDC stablecoin. Circle Gateway-based Nanopayments are designed to send as little as $0.000001 in USDC without gas fees, a structure aimed at high-frequency, ultra-small-value transactions.

Agent Wallet is designed to let agents manage assets autonomously within predefined guardrails, including permission-based controls and spending limits. Agents can create and use wallets instantly without a separate approval process.

Agent Marketplace is a directory-style platform where humans and AI agents can discover, evaluate and connect with a range of agentic services. The platform is designed so agents can pay for services programmatically.

Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said existing financial infrastructure has been built around people and that the next phase of the global economy will shift toward AI- and agent-centered activity. He described Agent Stack as the first comprehensive suite of services in which AI agents themselves are the customers.

Nikhil Chandhok, Circle’s chief product and technology officer, said USDC is an internet-native, programmable and always-available digital dollar. Combining programmable wallets, service discovery and machine-readable controls enables software to make payments the way it exchanges messages, he added.

Circle is also expanding internet-based financial infrastructure through a USDC-centered stablecoin network, its global remittance infrastructure Circle Payments Network, and Arc, its enterprise blockchain.