Sam Altman’s crypto project Worldcoin gets more coin in latest $115M raise

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May 25, 2023

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got coin? No? Well, WorldCoin did.

Tools for Humanity, the team that created Worldcoin, raised $115 million in a Series C round led by Blockchain Capital.

The crypto-focused project was co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman with a three-part mission: create a global ID, a global currency and an app that enables payments, purchases and transfers using its tokens – With other cryptocurrencies and traditional assets.

Worldcoin has faced some concerns from people concerned about privacy risks because it requires scanning the eyes of a billion people with a five-pound colored sphere called “the Orb” in exchange for its token.

“For good reason, people tend to be concerned and sensitive when it comes to biometrics – especially when you add a dose of crypto,” Spencer Bogart, general partner at Blockchain Capital, wrote in a post on Wednesday.

“However, what’s really happening under the hood is that the orb takes a picture of an iris and the device subsequently generates a unique encoding of the randomness of the iris (an ‘iris code’),” Bogart said. “By default, the original biometric is destroyed immediately and the iris code is the only thing left of the orb.”

While the public may be hesitant, investors are still diving into the project as it is one of the few crypto companies that is still receiving a large amount of capital amidst the ongoing bear market.

Other investors in the Series C round include a16z, Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global. In March 2022, Worldcoin raised $100 million at a $3 billion valuation.

In 2021, Alex Blania, CEO of WorldCoin, told TechCrunch that the currency is part of a larger effort to drive a more integrated and equitable global economy driven by the internet economy, something cryptocurrencies haven’t done particularly well in their first several years. Caught.

The latest increase will go towards bot detection, research and development and expanding its WorldCoin project and applications. Worldcoin is currently in beta testing and has approximately two million users across five continents.

Bogart and Blockchain Capital believe that WorldCoin could become the biggest onramp for crypto and that WorldApp could become the most widely adopted crypto wallet. This is all TBD.

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