World Foundation raises $52.5M in Pantera-led funding to expand World ID infrastructure

World Foundation has raised an initial $52.5 million through a sale of locked WLD tokens to strategic investors, with Pantera Capital leading the funding round.

The round also included Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings, Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto and other investors, according to a Friday announcement shared with Cointelegraph. The WLD tokens sold in the fundraising are subject to a 12-month lockup.

The nonprofit behind the World protocol said that new funds will be used to expand World ID, its system designed to distinguish people from AI agents. World ID generates a digital credential after users complete biometric verification at a World Orb device.

The organization said AI-generated content and autonomous agents are increasing demand 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 faced regulatory scrutiny in several jurisdictions over its biometric identity verification system.

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Crypto firms and investors deepen AI push

Investment in AI infrastructure and agent-focused technologies has continued to accelerate in recent weeks as companies and investors expand beyond traditional crypto markets. 

Earlier this month, brokerage infrastructure provider Alpaca raised $135 million in equity financing and secured up to $300 million in debt financing, along with access to up to $300 million in debt financing, to expand its agent-first brokerage platform. The company said the raise will help build infrastructure for AI-powered financial applications.

Source: Matt Huang

The raise came just a few weeks before Coinbase introduced tools allowing businesses to accept USDC (USDC) payments from autonomous AI agents, noting that AI-generated traffic exceeded human traffic on its Base developer documentation for the first time last month.

Investor appetite has followed the trend. Paradigm raised a $1.2 billion fund in July to invest across crypto, artificial intelligence, robotics and other frontier technologies, while Framework Ventures closed a $400 million fund in June with a mandate spanning crypto, AI, robotics and energy.

Capital is also flowing into AI security. Cybersecurity startup AegisAI raised $36 million in Series A funding this week to expand AI-powered email security tools, saying the financing will support defenses against increasingly sophisticated AI-generated phishing attacks.

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