Circle Internet Group said Friday that Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Fox-Geen plans to step down after more than five years in the role, prompting the USDC issuer to begin a search for a successor as the company enters a new phase of expansion.

The New York-based stablecoin company said it is working with an executive search firm to identify its next finance chief. Fox-Geen, who joined Circle in May 2021, will remain CFO through the end of 2026 to support the transition, unless a successor is appointed earlier.

His departure comes after a period of rapid growth for Circle, which has moved from being a major player in the cryptocurrency industry to a publicly listed financial technology company with a stablecoin that has become one of the largest dollar-linked digital assets in circulation.

Fox-Geen played a central role in that transition, including overseeing the company’s financial operations during its $1.2 billion initial public offering last year.

“Jeremy has played a key role in building Circle into the company it is today. He brought strategic insight, financial leadership, and operating discipline through periods of both market turmoil and tremendous growth,” Circle Chief Executive Jeremy Allaire said.

Fox-Geen said he believed the timing was right for him to leave after reaching a number of milestones at the company.

“Having achieved many milestones, it is now the right time for me to step down and take a break before my next chapter,” he said.

The company did not provide details about the reasons for his departure beyond Fox-Geen’s statement.

Leadership Change Comes As Stablecoins Enter Mainstream Finance

Circle’s CFO transition comes at an important point for the stablecoin industry. Circle is the issuer of USDC, a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency whose market capitalization stands at about $75 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data. Stablecoins have increasingly become a bridge between traditional financial markets and the cryptocurrency ecosystem, with companies and financial institutions using them for payments, trading, and the movement of dollars across blockchain networks.

The expansion has also increased the financial and regulatory importance of Circle’s business.

The company has had to operate through major changes in the cryptocurrency market while building the infrastructure and financial controls required of a public company. The CFO therefore sits at the intersection of capital markets, financial reporting, regulatory requirements, and the economics of issuing a dollar-backed digital asset.

Fox-Geen’s decision to stay through the end of the year gives Circle time to conduct the search while maintaining continuity in its finance organization.

The timing also means investors will have an opportunity to assess whether the leadership transition changes Circle’s financial priorities as the company continues expanding USDC’s reach. A successor will inherit a business whose performance is closely tied to the scale of the stablecoin market, interest rates, and the amount of USDC circulating in the financial system.

Stablecoin issuers generally benefit from interest income generated on the reserves backing their tokens. That makes the financial leadership of Circle particularly relevant as monetary conditions change, because shifts in interest rates can affect the economics of holding those reserves. At the same time, greater adoption of USDC can increase the scale of the underlying reserve pool, creating an important link between stablecoin circulation and Circle’s financial performance.

Circle also announced a separate leadership change involving co-founder Sean Neville, who is stepping down from the company’s board of directors effective immediately for personal reasons.

The company described Neville’s departure as part of an orderly process of board refreshment in a regulatory filing.

Neville co-founded Circle and has remained an important figure in the company’s history as it expanded from a cryptocurrency startup into a larger financial technology business.

His departure from the board, together with Fox-Geen’s planned exit, represents a notable change in Circle’s senior leadership structure. The two moves are separate, however, and Circle did not indicate that they were connected.

For Circle, the immediate priority will be maintaining continuity while finding a CFO capable of managing a substantially larger and more complex financial operation than the one Fox-Geen joined in 2021. The company now has to balance the demands of a public-market investor base with the rapid evolution of stablecoins, increasing regulatory scrutiny and competition across digital-dollar infrastructure.

Fox-Geen’s decision to remain in the role through the end of 2026 gives Circle a lengthy transition period. The eventual appointment will nevertheless be closely watched because the CFO will inherit responsibility for the financial architecture of a company whose fortunes are increasingly tied to the broader adoption of digital dollars.

Joe Lonsdale, an investor in Anthropic and co-founder of technology company Palantir, has accused leading artificial intelligence companies of using warnings about existential AI risks to influence public policy, warning that poorly designed regulation could strengthen the market position of the very companies pushing for greater oversight.

Lonsdale, who also founded venture capital firm 8VC, made the comments Friday at the Reuters Momentum AI Austin event, where he challenged recent calls from some of the industry’s most prominent executives for a slowdown in the development of increasingly capable AI systems.

“I think that what OpenAI and Anthropic are pushing right now is very dangerous, and we don’t want an oligopoly that controls all of our policy here with the government,” Lonsdale said.

“Safety is a real thing, but fear and regulation — we’ve got to be really careful how we respond to those things.”

His argument goes to a growing fault line in the AI industry. The debate is no longer only about whether advanced models pose serious risks. It is also about who should decide how those risks are regulated, what standards companies must meet, and whether the rules could unintentionally favor the handful of companies with the money, computing infrastructure and technical resources to comply.

Lonsdale criticized what he described as efforts by people close to Anthropic and OpenAI to fund outside organizations advocating stronger AI regulation. In his view, such efforts could allow leading laboratories to help design a regulatory framework that smaller competitors would find harder to navigate, potentially reinforcing the incumbents’ position.

That concern has become more relevant as the technology industry’s safety debate has intensified.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have all called this month for leading AI companies to slow the pace of development of their most advanced models. Their warnings have focused on the possibility that sophisticated AI systems could eventually operate beyond effective human oversight if safeguards fail to keep pace with capability gains.

Reuters reported that the safety debate has escalated sharply this month following concerns from researchers about AI systems evading safeguards, hacking computer systems and operating with levels of autonomy that developers have found difficult to monitor.

That backdrop complicates the argument that safety concerns are simply a lobbying strategy. There are documented incidents and internal concerns behind the industry’s warnings. At the same time, the companies making those warnings are also competing in an extremely valuable market and face commercial incentives that can make regulation economically consequential.

Anthropic, for example, has continued releasing increasingly capable models even as Amodei has called for a slowdown. The company launched Claude Opus 5.5 this week, saying it delivered performance comparable to its previous high-end model while reducing operating costs by 40%. The model also underwent external safety testing before release.

The development illustrates the industry’s central dilemma: companies can simultaneously believe that AI development presents serious risks and believe that they need to keep developing better systems to remain competitive.

Lonsdale himself stopped short of dismissing Anthropic’s work.

He praised Amodei and the company, in which he is a small investor, saying Anthropic had assembled exceptional talent and become a leader in AI.

“It’s very hard for anyone to second-guess the highest-performing company in the world over the last few years,” Lonsdale said. “I’m proud to be an investor in Anthropic.”

The debate is not simply dividing the AI industry into companies that care about safety and those that do not. The disagreement is about how safety should be achieved and who should bear the regulatory burden.

For smaller AI developers, expensive testing requirements, licensing systems, reporting obligations, or restrictions on model releases could raise barriers to entry. Larger laboratories may be better positioned to absorb those costs, potentially strengthening their competitive position.

For governments, however, leaving frontier AI companies to regulate themselves presents a different problem. The systems being developed by OpenAI, Anthropic and their competitors are becoming increasingly capable, while their potential impact extends beyond the companies’ own products.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 73% of Americans surveyed were concerned that AI companies were not doing enough to prevent potentially catastrophic consequences, while a majority favored federal involvement in setting AI safety standards.

The political pressure therefore extends beyond the industry’s own lobbying efforts.

AI Safety Debate Collides With US-China Competition

The regulatory argument is also unfolding against a geopolitical race between the United States and China.

Washington has increasingly treated AI leadership as a national-security and economic priority. At the same time, Chinese open-weight models have become more competitive with American systems, raising concerns in Washington that excessive restrictions on U.S. developers could slow domestic innovation while allowing Chinese competitors to gain ground.

Reuters reported earlier this month that the United States and China were preparing their first bilateral discussions focused specifically on AI safety, including possible cooperation on monitoring AI-directed cyberattacks and sharing information about emerging threats.

That competition gives another dimension to the debate over a slowdown.

If U.S. companies reduce the pace at which they develop frontier systems while Chinese developers continue advancing, American companies could lose technological ground. On the other hand, allowing sophisticated AI systems to proliferate without adequate safeguards could create security risks that are difficult to reverse.

The Trump administration has generally argued for a lighter regulatory approach. At a G20 technology meeting earlier this month, U.S. technology adviser Michael Kratsios urged countries to adopt the “Carolina Principles,” which call for reserving new AI regulation for novel circumstances rather than imposing broad new rules on the technology.

That position broadly aligns with the industry’s concern that regulation could constrain innovation, although it does not eliminate the question of how frontier systems should be tested or monitored.

The challenge now centers on the architecture of AI governance: whether safety should be handled primarily through voluntary commitments, government standards, independent testing, industry-led systems, or some combination of all four.

Lonsdale’s argument adds a market-structure concern to that discussion. If the companies developing the most advanced systems also have a major role in determining the standards they must satisfy, regulation could potentially become a competitive barrier as well as a safety mechanism.

Defense Technology and The Next Phase Of Autonomous Warfare

Lonsdale also discussed the rapidly expanding role of AI in defense, arguing that his portfolio companies are likely to deepen their relationships with Ukrainian defense-technology firms that have developed battlefield systems during Russia’s more than four-year war in Ukraine.

“We’re partnering very closely with them. A lot of our companies work with their companies,” Lonsdale said. “A lot of our companies are likely to buy some of the companies over there.”

Lonsdale has invested in defense technology companies including Anduril, placing his comments in the broader convergence of AI, drones and autonomous military systems.

He said autonomous weapons are likely to play an important role in warfare but argued that responsibility must remain with military leaders.

“There’s always a person responsible who is in charge of whatever system they studied, worked on and approved,” he said. “It’s very easy from the outside to judge these things when you’re not there in the fog of war.”

The question of human accountability has become consequential as militaries deploy systems capable of identifying targets, navigating environments and operating with progressively less direct human intervention.

The issue was highlighted by the U.S.-Iran conflict earlier this year after a strike on a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, killed more than 175 children and teachers, according to Iranian officials. Reuters reported that a preliminary U.S. military investigation found U.S. forces were likely responsible and pointed to outdated intelligence used in the targeting process.

The episode points to why the debate over autonomous weapons cannot be reduced to whether an algorithm technically makes the final decision. Accountability also extends to the people who design, authorize, deploy and supervise the systems and the information on which those systems operate.

Lonsdale’s remarks ultimately connect three intertwined areas of the technology industry: frontier AI, regulation and defense.

His warning about an AI oligopoly reflects a concern that deserves to be separated from the underlying question of AI safety. Advanced AI may present genuine risks that require external oversight, while regulation designed or influenced too heavily by incumbent companies could also affect competition.

Therefore, the challenge for policymakers goes beyond the debate about AI regulation. It is designing rules that can address demonstrated and emerging risks without allowing the companies with the greatest resources and market share to turn safety standards into barriers against competitors.

That tension is likely to escalate as AI systems move from generating information to controlling software, conducting cyber operations, and interacting with physical systems. The more consequential these systems become, the harder it will be to separate the safety debate from questions of market power, national security, and who ultimately controls the development of the technology.

Wall Street ended higher on Friday as renewed demand for AI-related technology stocks helped the S&P 500 and Nasdaq recover from a volatile week, although the rally remained constrained by rising oil prices, elevated Treasury yields and growing expectations that the Federal Reserve could resume raising interest rates.

Microsoft was among the biggest drivers of the technology-led advance, gaining 3.7% after unveiling new capabilities for its Copilot artificial intelligence platform, including a coding tool and an always-on AI agent. The gain lifted Microsoft’s 2026 advance to 7%.

Qualcomm rose 4%, and Dell gained 5%, adding to a broader recovery in technology stocks tied to the continued expansion of AI infrastructure.

Akamai Technologies also advanced 3.2% after announcing an $11.6 billion, seven-year cloud infrastructure agreement with Anthropic. The deal includes a warrant that could give Anthropic a stake of as much as 5% in Akamai, creating another example of the interconnected financial relationships between AI developers and the companies supplying their computing infrastructure.

“That’s a positive from the standpoint that people are still investing, deals are still being done,” said Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments in Atlanta. “It’s another circular deal, so OK … but Akamai stock is up.”

The gains pushed the S&P 500 up 0.51% to 7,743.41. The Nasdaq rose 0.48% to 27,068.72, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.93% to 51,828.62.

For the week, the S&P 500 advanced 1.2%, and the Nasdaq gained 2%, following a record close for the technology-heavy index on Tuesday.

Yet the market’s weekly performance masks a more complicated backdrop. Investors are increasingly having to assess two opposing forces: the earnings and investment momentum generated by AI, and the tightening financial conditions created by higher oil prices and government bond yields.

AI Spending Continues to Support Markets

Seven of the S&P 500’s 11 sector indexes finished higher on Friday, led by information technology, which gained 0.91%. Industrials followed with a 0.6% increase.

The latest economic data also bolstered the importance of AI investment to the US economy.

Business spending on AI-related infrastructure helped drive demand for key manufactured capital goods in August, with orders exceeding expectations. That provides another indication that the AI boom is translating into real investment across the broader economy rather than remaining confined to technology companies.

The market’s enthusiasm, however, is increasingly dependent on whether that spending eventually produces sufficient earnings.

The S&P 500 traded at just under 19 times expected earnings during the week, its lowest valuation since 2023, according to LSEG data. AI-heavy companies have accounted for much of the recent improvement in earnings expectations, creating a potentially important distinction for investors. The market is not simply pricing AI as a technological theme. It is increasingly relying on the technology’s ability to generate earnings growth large enough to justify the capital being deployed across chips, cloud computing, data centers, and software.

Microsoft’s latest Copilot expansion and Anthropic’s massive Akamai commitment provide fresh evidence of continuing AI demand. But they also highlight the scale of investment required to sustain the sector.

Treasury Yields Remain The Bigger Macro Threat

The strongest constraint on the equity rally came from the bond market. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield reached a fresh 19-year high and was last up 3.4 basis points at 5.196%. A yield above 5% represents a significant change in the financial environment for equities because it raises the return investors can obtain from relatively low-risk government debt.

It also increases borrowing costs throughout the economy.

The rise in Treasury yields has been driven by a combination of persistent inflation concerns, strong economic data, and expectations that the Federal Reserve may need to raise interest rates again.

Markets were pricing a 66% probability of at least a 25-basis-point Fed rate increase in October, according to CME Group’s FedWatch Tool, up from roughly 50% earlier in the week. That repricing is occurring even as investors continue to absorb the effects of already elevated borrowing costs.

For technology companies, the issue has become relevant because higher interest rates increase the discount rate applied to future earnings. Companies whose valuations depend heavily on expectations of strong earnings growth several years into the future can therefore face greater pressure when bond yields rise.

The fact that technology stocks still advanced in the face of a 5.2% 10-year yield suggests that investors remain willing to pay for companies they believe can produce sufficient AI-driven growth. But it also means the earnings burden on the sector is becoming higher.

Oil Adds Another Inflation Risk

Oil remains another source of uncertainty. Brent crude eased on Friday but stayed above $100 a barrel as investors monitored diplomatic efforts to end the US-Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Reports that US and Iranian negotiators were exploring a phased path out of the conflict provided some relief to markets. Such an arrangement would involve Tehran reopening the strategic waterway and Washington lifting its economic blockade of Iran.

The prospect of easing tensions helped offset some of the pressure created by elevated energy prices.

The market remains highly sensitive to developments in the Middle East because a prolonged disruption around the Strait of Hormuz could feed directly into global energy prices and inflation expectations.

Higher oil prices create a difficult policy environment for the Federal Reserve. Energy costs can raise headline inflation while simultaneously reducing consumers’ purchasing power and increasing companies’ operating expenses. That combination could make it harder for the central bank to support economic activity through lower interest rates.

Investors Remain Selective Within AI

The week’s trading also showed that enthusiasm for AI is no longer uniform across the technology sector.

Microsoft rallied strongly, while Qualcomm, Dell and Akamai also benefited from expectations surrounding AI-related demand.

Meta Platforms, however, fell 3.3% on Friday even though its shares had climbed about 13% during the week following the strong reception to its Muse AI agent.

Muse has generated expectations that AI agents could benefit companies providing computing infrastructure, but the technology could also disrupt businesses that depend on conventional digital intermediaries, including banks, online shopping platforms and other consumer-facing services.

Despite the headline gains, market breadth remained mixed.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining stocks within the S&P 500 by 1.9 to 1, but the Nasdaq recorded 175 new lows against 54 new highs. The S&P 500 posted three new highs and 31 new lows.

Trading volume was also relatively light, with 14.9 billion shares changing hands compared with a 20-session average of 16.8 billion.

That suggests Friday’s advance was not necessarily evidence of a broad-based removal of risk from the market. Investors continued to concentrate on companies with strong AI exposure and the earnings growth associated with it, while other areas remained vulnerable to higher rates and energy costs.

The summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping also provided some support to sentiment. Trump described his meeting with Xi as “very productive” following their three-day summit, although the gathering produced limited publicly announced breakthroughs on the most contentious economic issues.

For Wall Street, the immediate focus remains the interaction between AI-driven earnings growth and increasingly restrictive financial conditions.

AI investment is still providing a powerful source of economic and corporate momentum. Microsoft, Qualcomm, Dell and Akamai all offered fresh evidence of that spending cycle this week.

But with the 10-year Treasury yield approaching 5.2%, oil above $100 and markets assigning a rising probability to another Fed rate increase, investors are confronting a higher hurdle for virtually every asset.

The result is a market where AI optimism remains powerful, but increasingly has to compete with the mathematics of higher interest rates and more expensive energy.