Friday, June 6, 2025

Circle’s CEO is thrilled over SEC oversight

The 2025 Fortune 500 is here—and the story’s just getting started. From AI breakthroughs and DEI rollbacks to leadership exits and return-to-office showdowns, this year’s business landscape is shifting fast. We’ve published the list. Now we’re tracking the moves.

Subscribe now to access the list, the profiles, and the reporting that follows what’s next.

• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on Circle’s IPO pop.
• The big story: Elon Musk and Donald Trump are fighting.
• The markets: Up in U.S. before jobs report.
• Analyst notes from UBS, BofA, and Goldman Sachs.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Yesterday was a very good day for Jeremy Allaire, as shares in his crypto firm Circle (CRCL) began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, closing at 168% above its $31 IPO price (the company upsized the IPO the night before its debut). “As we went through our IPO Road Show and ultimately priced the deal, we saw an incredible amount of interest and enthusiasm from an incredibly broad and deep array of investors,” Allaire told me in a phone conversation on Thursday.

It’s been a long journey for Allaire, who tried to take the stablecoin issuer public through a SPAC merger in 2021 but didn’t get approval from the SEC, which had then questioned how to classify its USD Coin, a form of cryptocurrency backed by the U.S. dollar, and the company itself.

Fast forward and it’s a new day. The GENIUS Act just passed the Senate with bipartisan support and looks likely to become law, providing a federal framework for regulating stablecoins. (The House introduced its own stablecoin bill.) Said Allaire: “No matter what your political affiliation is, sound regulation makes sense, especially when a technology like this is on the cusp of such widespread adoption.”

For Allaire, though, nothing matches the thrill of being under the watch of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “As a financial platform and financial infrastructure company that people are going to build on, where we’re actually issuing a new kind of money, being public really matters,” he said. “Becoming an SEC-regulated and supervised company just strengthens those attributes at a time where stable coin is becoming a global mainstream phenomenon.”

At the end of a long day, Allaire told me he’s grateful to his family, his team, developers that build applications on this technology, and the broad and deep array of investors that helped give Circle a successful debut. But, he says, he doesn’t want to get too caught up in the stock price. “What’s important is that we’re building a great company. We’ve got investors that want to be with us. We’ve got a lot to do.”

More news below.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

TOP NEWS

Trump and Musk butt heads

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk traded jabs on social media on Thursday as Musk continues to criticize Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” for raising the budget deficit. Trump’s attacks on Musk, which included threats to cut billions worth of government contracts to Tesla, brought the EV company’s shares down more than 14%.

Plus: Fortune’s Alexei Oreskovic breaks down which Big Tech figure could replace Musk in Trump's circle.

Anduril raises $2.5 billion

Anduril announced a $2.5 billion funding round on Thursday, giving the defense firm a $30.5 billion valuation. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led the round with a $1 billion investment.

Making smartphones on American soil

Meet Purism CEO Todd Weaver, the founder of one of the only smartphone companies that manufactures some of their smartphones in the U.S. He says that the U.S. is disadvantaged when it comes to skilled workers and supply chain costs, but isn’t the manufacturing dead end that some believe it to be.

Judge blocks Trump's Harvard ban

A federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked President Trump’s effort to ban international students from entering the U.S. to enroll at Harvard University. Around a quarter of Harvard’s students come from abroad, and the university relies on their often full-fee tuition payments.

Trump-Xi call doesn't solve mineral shortage

Trump said he had a “very good” call with China's Xi Jinping, but the high-stakes call has yet to resolve a global shortage of rare earth minerals that businesses say could halt production of cars and other industrial goods this summer. China announced new export controls on seven rare earth elements in April.

Musk cuts ISS delivery craft—or not

Elon Musk said SpaceX would start to decommission its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” because of Trump's threats to cancel government contracts with his businesses. But hours later, Musk said he nixed that decision after an X user urged him to “cool off.” Dragon is the only U.S. option for transporting crew to and from the International Space Station.

Europe's defense bonanza

Europe's rush to boost defense spending in response to Trump's threatened pullback of the U.S. from the world stage has anointed a swathe of industrial winners beyond the obvious defense stocks, running from chemicals producers to goggle makers.

JPMorgan warns new hires

JPMorgan is telling incoming graduate employees that if they accept future-dated job offers elsewhere within 18 months of starting their analyst program, they will be fired, the Financial Times reports. While JPMorgan did not single out private equity firms, there is an implicit reference to recruiting in which buyout groups offer graduates jobs two years ahead of their expected start date.