Company: CRCL
Filing Date: 2025-05-16
Form Type: S-1/A
Source: 0001193125-25-121234
Chunk: 180

Company: Circle Internet Group, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-05-16
Form: S-1/A
Chunk 180
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 by a third-party valuation firm. These factors included, among other things, the following:

| • |     | our actual operating and financial performance and estimated trends and prospects for our future performance; |

| • |     | the composition of, and changes to, our management team and board of directors; |

| • |     | consideration of the lack of liquidity of the common stock as a private company; |

| • |     | our stage of development, business strategy, and the material risks related to our business and industry; |

| • |     | the valuations of publicly traded companies in the financial services sector, as well as recently completed mergers and 
 acquisitions of peer companies;                                                                                         |

| • |     | external market conditions affecting the financial services sector; |

| • |     | the likelihood of achieving a liquidity event for the holders of our common stock; |

| • |     | the prices, rights, preferences, and privileges of our convertible preferred stock relative to those of our common stock; 
 and                                                                                                                       |

| • |     | the prices of our convertible preferred stock and common stock sold to investors in 
 arm’s-length transactions or offered to investors through a tender offer.           |

125

Our policy is to value our common shares at least quarterly with significant events potentially requiring additional
valuations.

In September 2021, we initiated a program to grant employees restricted stock units (“RSUs”) as part of our compensation program. The RSUs
vest upon the satisfaction of both a service condition and a liquidity condition. Both the service and liquidity conditions must be met for the expense to be recognized. The fair value of RSUs is estimated based on the fair value of our common stock
on the date of grant. Stock-based compensation expense related to the RSUs is recorded on a tranche-by-tranche basis over the requisite service period, when the
liquidity condition is considered probable.

We use the Black-Scholes option pricing model (“Black-Scholes”) to estimate the grant-date fair value of
option grants. The Black-Scholes model requires management to make a number of key assumptions, including expected volatility, expected term, risk-free interest rate, and expected dividends. The expected term represents the period of time that the
options are expected to be outstanding and is estimated using the midpoint between the requisite service period and the contractual term of the option. The risk-free interest rate is estimated using the rate of return on U.S. Treasury notes with a
life that approximates the expected