The World Foundation raised an initial $52.5 million by selling locked WLD tokens to strategic investors, with Pantera Capital leading the funding round.
Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto and other investors also participated in the round, according to Friday’s announcement shared with Cointelegraph. WLD tokens sold as part of the collection are subject to a 12-month block.
The nonprofit behind the World Protocol said the modern funding would be used to expand World ID, a system designed to distinguish humans from AI agents. World ID generates digital credentials once the user completes biometric verification on the World Orb device.
The organization said content generated by artificial intelligence and autonomous agents is increasing the need for systems that can verify 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 undergone regulatory scrutiny in several jurisdictions in relation to its biometric identity verification system.
Related: BTC treasury firm Empery Digital is investing $20 million in Cardinal Data Power, a developer of AI data centers
Crypto companies and investors are deepening their focus on artificial intelligence
Investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure and agent-centric technologies continues to accelerate in recent weeks as companies and investors expand beyond classic cryptocurrency markets.
Earlier this month, brokerage infrastructure provider Alpaca raised $135 million in equity financing and secured up to $300 million in debt financing, as well as access to up to $300 million in debt financing to expand its agent-first brokerage platform. The company said the raise will support build infrastructure for AI-based financial applications.
Source: Matt Huang
The raise came just weeks before Coinbase rolled out tools to allow businesses to accept USDC (USDC) payments from autonomous AI agents, noting that AI-generated traffic exceeded human traffic for the first time in developer Base’s filing last month.
Investor appetite followed the trend. In July, Paradigm raised a $1.2 billion fund to invest in crypto, artificial intelligence, robotics and other frontier technologies, while Framework Ventures closed a $400 million fund in June with ventures spanning crypto, artificial intelligence, robotics and energy.
Capital also influences the security of artificial intelligence. Cybersecurity startup AegisAI raised $36 million in a Series A round this week to expand its AI-powered email security tools, saying the funding will support defense against increasingly sophisticated AI-generated phishing attacks.
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