World Foundation has raised $52.5mn through a sale of locked WLD tokens led by Pantera Capital, days after Grayscale filed to launch the first exchange-traded fund (ETF) tied to the Sam Altman-backed digital identity project.
Sam Altman's World Raises $52.5mn To Prove Who's Human Online
25 July 2026 - 00:36 CEST
By Jona Jaupi
The funding round also included Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital and Susquehanna Crypto, the foundation said on 24 Jul. The WLD tokens sold in the round will be locked for one year.
The announcement also comes just four days after Grayscale's ETF filing, which would give investors exposure to WLD through a traditional stock exchange. If approved, it would trade under the ticker GWLD.
World, formerly known as Worldcoin, is a digital identity project developed by Tools for Humanity, the company co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania. The project is overseen by the World Foundation, an independent organization responsible for the World protocol ecosystem. It is best known for World ID, a system that lets people prove they are human online after completing an iris scan using a device called the Orb.
Digital identity tools are receiving more attention as the explosive growth of AI has led to a flood of machine-generated images, videos and recordings that are increasingly difficult to differentiate from the real things, a problem that to a very real extent Altman is helping create as his OpenAI firm is one of the companies driving the generative AI boom.
WLD, the native token of World, traded at around $0.37 as of 18:20UTC, down 4% over the past 24 hours, despite the fundraising announcement and Grayscale's ETF filing. It remains 78% below its all-time high.
Expanding World ID
The foundation said it will use the new funding to expand World ID for consumers, businesses and AI applications. Pantera Capital added that a growing demand for tools that help distinguish between humans from AI was one reason it backed the project.
"The need for Proof of Human is becoming acutely clear with the acceleration of AI development, and we see this in the influx of enterprise traction," said Cosmo Jiang, Pantera Capital general partner.
AI and digital identity
The deepfake images, videos and voices generated by AI are frequently used for criminal purposes. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received more than 22,000 complaints involving AI-related crimes in 2025, with reported losses totaling nearly $900mn.
World says digital identity tools will become more important as AI-generated content and AI agents become even more common online.
Unlike traditional chatbots, AI agents are designed to complete tasks such as booking travel, shopping online, and even investing funds with little to zero human input.
Gartner forecasts that spending on AI models and platforms will increase 63% this year to more than $64bn. The research firm also expects 40% of enterprise applications to include task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025.
Years of scrutiny
World has and continues to face scrutiny over its collection of biometric data in several countries.
In 2024, Colombia's consumer protection authority opened an investigation into whether World and Tools for Humanity broke the country's privacy laws by collecting biometric data.
A year earlier, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office said it was looking into World after its launch, emphasizing that its processing of biometric data must have a clear legal basis and safeguards.
World has also faced investigations or restrictions in Germany, France, Brazil, Kenya and Hong Kong over its use of biometric data. Sandmark has reached out to World Foundation for comment.
