The World Foundation, the nonprofit steward of the World Network protocol, has secured $52.5 million through a locked token sale to strategic investors. The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Eightco Holdings, targeting digital verification expansion. Investors who participated in the raise agreed to a 12-month lockup on World’s native token, WLD, as part of the deal structure. The Sam Altman-backed digital identity project aims to use the fresh capital to scale its Orb-based “proof of human” verification technology across enterprise platforms and AI agents. Growing concerns across the tech industry over bots, deepfakes, and AI agents impersonating real humans online have intensified demand for reliable identity verification infrastructure. More than 39 million people have joined the World Network, with over 18 million verified through an Orb device and more than 475 million World ID proofs issued to date. World ID functions by having users visit a physical Orb that scans their iris, generating a unique cryptographic credential stored locally on the user’s phone. The system relies on zero-knowledge proofs and what World describes as anonymised multi-party computation to confirm someone is a unique human without exposing personal identity data. The project, originally conceived by Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania, has faced sustained regulatory scrutiny over its approach to biometric data collection. Docusign, Okta, Vercel, and Tinder have each signed integration deals with World, addressing different dimensions of the bot and deepfake trust problem on digital platforms. World is collaborating with Zoom on a feature called “Deep Face,” which verifies that a meeting participant is a real human rather than a deepfake representation. A partnership with Docusign is also underway to incorporate proof-of-human checks directly into digital agreements, adding a verification layer to legally sensitive workflows. World is additionally rolling out a developer toolkit called “AgentKit,” designed to attach human-verified credentials to AI agents handling sensitive or commerce-related tasks. The company is working with Okta, Vercel, and Browserbase on these agent-focused capabilities, aiming to establish a trust layer for automated workflows that requires no personal data disclosure.
