The World Foundation has raised $52.5 million to expand World ID—the "proof of human" system from Sam Altman's World—betting that verifying who is human will only grow more critical as AI agents flood the internet, the nonprofit said Friday.

The initial token sale was led by Pantera Capital and drew Bain Capital Crypto, Nasdaq-listed Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital, and Susquehanna Crypto, with all the WLD sold locked up for 12 months. The money will go toward bringing World ID to organizations, consumers, and their AI agents, the Foundation said. Pantera general partner Cosmo Jiang said the "need for Proof of Human is becoming acutely clear" as AI development accelerates.

How World ID works

World ID lets a person prove they are a unique human without revealing their identity, through a one-time iris scan at a spherical device called the Orb that generates an ID stored on their phone. World, rebranded from Worldcoin in 2024, was co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to build a global "proof of personhood" system. The technology is being integrated this year with platforms including Zoom, Docusign, Okta, Vercel, and Tinder, the Foundation said, alongside a new enterprise-ready release, World ID 4.0, that lets outside developers build their own credentials into the system.

The raise coincides with the project's third anniversary. More than 39 million people have joined the network, 18 million have been verified by an Orb, and World has processed 475 million ID proofs, the Foundation said.

Scrutiny and appetite

World's iris-scanning model has drawn regulatory pushback across multiple countries over its handling of biometric data. Hong Kong ordered it to cease operations in 2024; a Kenyan court ordered it to delete users' biometric data; and Brazil banned it from paying people for iris scans. Spain moved to halt its data collection, and South Korea fined the project $830,000 for privacy violations.

Institutional interest has grown regardless. Eightco, one of Friday's investors, built the first corporate WLD treasury last year, and Grayscale this week filed for the first U.S. ETF tied to the token.

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