Pantera Capital leads initial close alongside Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto, and other key investors backing human first technology
World Foundation announced it raised an initial $52.5 million in new funding via a 1-year locked token sale to strategic investors.
Pantera Capital led the first close which also included Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings , Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto, and additional investors. Demonstrating investors’ long-term commitment to World’s continued growth and utility, all WLD sold as part of this fundraise is subject to a 12-month lockup.
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As AI rapidly transforms the internet, the need for World ID infrastructure is accelerating across consumer platforms, enterprise digital services, and the agentic web. The new capital will be used to bring World ID technology to organizations, consumers, and their AI agents globally.
“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. We’re excited to continue supporting World’s mission at this inflection point in its growth,” said Cosmo Jiang, Pantera Capital General Partner.
“We’re excited to support World Foundation’s continued growth,” said Tom Lee, Board Member of Eightco (ORBS). “World’s technology and proof of human and variations are among the most important building blocks to secure and verify interactions in an increasingly digital driven world.”
Making the internet more human
As AI agents and agentic tools proliferate, the internet, and the multibillion-dollar industries that depend on it, will need a reliable way to distinguish humans from machines. Without it, advertising models built on genuine views and engagement become unreliable, dating platforms are flooded with synthetic profiles, voting systems become more difficult to validate, creative marketplaces struggle to identify original work, and video calls become vulnerable to deepfakes and impersonation. Put simply, trust and reliability on digital platforms is on the verge of breaking.
World has built the only technology that enables individuals to prove they are unique humans without revealing their identity. A one-time verification, performed at an Orb, generates your World ID. The unique ID is securely stored on your phone and unlocks trusted online experiences while keeping your data private. The process utilizes advanced cryptography, anonymized multi-party computation, developed and open sourced by the World Foundation.
Starting this year, World ID is being integrated with the internet’s most important communications, identity, authentication, and even dating platforms, including Zoom, Docusign, Okta, Vercel, and Tinder. Hear directly from the executives who spoke at World Foundation’s recent Lift Off event describing the impact of AI on their platforms firsthand.
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