OpenAI’s Sam Altman Promotes Worldcoin Project Amid $50M Funding

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has reiterated his stance on the Worldcoin project. In a recent virtual Q&A session with the investment banking firm FT Partners, Altman echoed his support, saying:

“In a world with a lot of AI, knowing who is human matters more and more. The belief was and is that as AI becomes an increasingly important part of our lives…the ability to identify unique humans was going to be more and more important.”

Worldcoin is a crypto project using its eye-scanning device called Orb, enabling users to store their digital identities on the blockchain. It was created in 2019 by its CEO Alex Blania, Sam Altman, and Max Novendstern. The project is actively developed by Tools for Humanity, a research lab co-founded by the OpenAI’s boss.

Worldcoin to Raise $50M

Over a week ago, Worldcoin was rumoured to be raising $50 million from investors. The fundraising mechanism to be adopted is a discounted sale of the project’s native token, WLD, for $1.

While no official comment has come from the project or its top executives, the discounted token sale price may likely attract investors. This is because WLD currently trades around $2.5, a value 60% higher than the advertised price for the purportedly discounted price. Meanwhile, WLD’s current price represents a mild 3.7% increase over the past week.

Source: CoinStats

With Altman’s reinforced support for the eye-scanning-focused project, investors are likely to pour in their funds to finance the Worldcoin vision.

Recall that Worldcoin had previously raised $115 million from investors to develop its World app, a crypto wallet for the ecosystem.

Worldcoin Expands Business

Over the past few months, Worldcoin has taken its iris-scanning technology to several parts of the world. The project aims to onboard as many users as possible into its ecosystem. In September, the project had attracted 1% of Chile’s 19.5 million population.

In some other regions, regulators probe the project, questioning its data collection practices.

This has not stopped Worldcoin from building its project. On December 13th, the crypto project unveiled World ID 2.0, a system described as a “proof of personhood,” enabling users to use their faces for self-custodial authentication.