Circle Internet Financial, behind the stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), has announced talks to raise $400 million, involving BlackRock, Fidelity Management and Research, Marshall Wace and Fin Capital.

with demand for #USDC With financial services growth and use cases continuing to scale globally, Circle plans additional strategic growth with the announcement of a $400 million funding round and strategic partnership with BlackRock. https://t.co/OjkhYT0f5T

— Circle (@circlepay) April 12, 2022

The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.

BlackRock becomes Circle’s strategic partner. The deal includes examining the possibilities of using USDC in the capital market.

The investments will be used to further develop the company’s infrastructure in response to the growing demand for stablecoins and related financial services.

According to CoinGecko, USD Coin has a capitalization of $50.9 billion. In January 2022, the supply of USDC on the Ethereum blockchain surpassed the market leader USDT for the first time.

In addition to Ethereum, Circle supports USDC on Algorand, Solana, Stellar, Tron, Hedera Hashgraph, Avalanche and Flow networks. The company also announced that it has created a “global stablecoin network.”

In July 2021, Concord Acquisition Corp. as part of its listing on the stock market through a reverse merger with While the company was valued at $4.5 billion, this figure doubled in February 2022.

Recall that in August 2021, Circle promised to restructure a commercial cryptocurrency bank. At the same time, the company and its partner in the Center consortium, exchange Coinbase, pledged to transfer stablecoin reserves to dollars and US Treasury bonds.