Overview
- The World Foundation announced Friday that it raised $52.5 million in a locked sale of WLD tokens led by Pantera Capital to finance the next phase of the World ID project.
- The token sale was completed to strategic investors including Bain Capital Crypto and Eightco Holdings and the purchased WLD tokens will remain locked for a year, the foundation said.
- The foundation said the funding supports a shift from user growth to practical deployments, noting the World Network now totals roughly 39–40 million users with more than 18 million Orb verifications and over 475 million World ID proofs issued.
- World uses a physical Orb to generate a privacy-focused World ID that proves a person is unique without revealing identity details, and the foundation says the technology is already integrated with services such as Zoom, Tinder, DocuSign, Okta and Vercel.
- The $52.5 million round follows a $135 million WLD sale in May 2025 and could speed enterprise and AI adoption of proof-of-human tools while raising questions about governance, token concentration and regulatory scrutiny as the network expands.