World Foundation has secured an initial $52.5 million through a sale of locked WLD tokens to strategic investors, with Pantera Capital leading the funding round.

The round also drew participation from Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto, and additional investors, according to a Friday announcement shared with Cointelegraph. The WLD tokens sold in the fundraising are subject to a 12-month lockup period, meaning they cannot be traded or transferred for a year, limiting any near-term increase in circulating supply.

The nonprofit behind the World protocol stated that the new capital will be deployed to expand World ID, a system designed to distinguish human users from AI agents. World ID issues a digital credential after individuals complete biometric verification using a World Orb device. The project sits within an emerging category often described as "proof of personhood," which has drawn growing interest as Web3 platforms seek ways to prevent sybil attacks — where single actors create multiple identities to manipulate airdrops, governance votes, or reward systems.

The organization noted that the proliferation of AI-generated content and autonomous agents is intensifying demand for solutions capable of confirming whether an online user is a real person.

World was originally conceived by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania. The project has encountered regulatory scrutiny in multiple jurisdictions over its biometric identity verification system, with authorities in several countries raising data privacy concerns about the collection and storage of iris-scan data.

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Crypto Firms and Investors Deepen AI Push

Investment in AI infrastructure and agent-focused technologies has continued to accelerate in recent weeks as companies and investors broaden their focus beyond traditional crypto markets.

Earlier this month, brokerage infrastructure provider Alpaca raised $135 million in equity financing and secured up to $300 million in debt financing to expand its agent-first brokerage platform. The company said the raise will support the development of infrastructure for AI-powered financial applications.

Source: Matt Huang

The fundraising came just weeks before Coinbase introduced tools allowing businesses to accept USDC (USDC) payments from autonomous AI agents. Coinbase noted that AI-generated traffic surpassed human traffic on its Base developer documentation for the first time last month.

Investor appetite has tracked the trend. Paradigm raised a $1.2 billion fund in July to invest across crypto, artificial intelligence, robotics, and other frontier technologies, while Framework Ventures closed a $400 million fund in June with a mandate spanning crypto, AI, robotics, and energy.

Capital is also flowing into AI security. Cybersecurity startup AegisAI raised $36 million in Series A funding this week to expand AI-powered email security tools, stating that the financing will bolster defenses against increasingly sophisticated AI-generated phishing attacks.

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