World has sold $52.5 million worth of its WLD token to a group of investors in a round led by Pantera Capital. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman co-founded the identity verification project, originally launched under the name Worldcoin before rebranding to World.

The World Foundation announced Friday that all buyers have agreed to a 12-month lockup period during which they cannot sell their tokens.

Pantera Leads Locked $52.5M WLD Raise

Every purchaser committed to holding WLD for a full year before being permitted to transact, restricting near-term token transfers and aligning buyer interests with the project's longer-term roadmap. The round was led by Pantera Capital, a firm that invests exclusively in digital assets. The foundation described this as the first close of the sale, leaving open the possibility of additional closes.

Bain Capital Crypto, Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto, and Eightco Holdings also participated. Eightco is a treasury company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker ORBS and already holds a substantial portion of the WLD supply. Proceeds from the sale are being transferred to the World Foundation, a guarantee foundation established in the Cayman Islands to oversee the network.

World plans to deploy the new capital to scale World ID, a system designed to verify that an individual is human without disclosing their identity. The target audience includes organizations, consumers, and AI agents requiring proof of human operation. Proof of personhood has emerged as a distinct category within both the crypto and AI governance landscapes as generative AI tools make it increasingly difficult to distinguish human activity from automated or synthetic content online.

"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 Pantera general partner Cosmo Jiang in a statement.

World argues that a dependable human verification mechanism is absent, and that deepfakes and synthetic identities are creating escalating problems across online dating, digital advertising, voting systems, and video calls.

The foundation stated that World ID 4.0 is built for enterprise-scale integrations. Developers can use it to issue additional credentials via zero-knowledge proofs. According to the foundation, Zoom, DocuSign, Okta, Vercel, and Tinder have already integrated World ID.

WLD has attracted renewed attention this year amid growing interest in AI. In mid-June, Cryptopolitan reported that WLD had risen above $0.59 as trading volume and open interest climbed, with significant liquidity flowing through South Korea's Upbit exchange. At the time of writing, WLD was trading at approximately $0.34, down roughly 10.2% on the day, with a market capitalization of about $1.29 billion, according to CoinGecko.

The World Foundation shared details of the raise on X.

WLD Buyers Receive No Equity Stake

The WLD tokens sold in this round are "intended for use within World Network and do not represent investment interest or rights to profits or returns," the foundation said. A spokesperson clarified that the tokens carry no equity in Tools for Humanity, the San Francisco-based company responsible for building World's hardware and software, led by co-founder and CEO Alex Blania.

Altman is also a co-founder of the company. The concept originated with Altman, Blania, and Max Novendstern. The organizational structure maintains a separation between the for-profit and nonprofit sides of the entity.

Tools for Humanity has raised approximately $240 million in venture capital. Prior to this round, the World Foundation and related entities had generated $200 million through WLD sales. With this latest round included, the project has now raised a total of approximately $492.5 million.

Adoption and Regulatory Challenges

More than 39 million people have registered for World's network, according to the company. Over 18 million individuals have completed the iris scan required to create a World ID, performed using an Orb — a metallic sphere that converts a person's iris into a cryptographic marker.

Since launch, users have generated over 475 million verification proofs, the foundation reported.

Despite these figures, the company has faced difficulties in building consumer engagement and laid off staff at Tools for Humanity in June.

World's collection of biometric data has drawn scrutiny from regulators. The project has been investigated, restricted, suspended, or fined in Spain, Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong, and the Philippines due to privacy and consent concerns. Privacy advocates and digital rights organizations have also publicly questioned the trade-offs between the utility of a global proof-of-personhood system and the risks associated with centralizing sensitive biometric data. World has stated that it continues to engage with regulators as it expands.