Funds from the venture capital giants will be used for the network's expansion.
May 21, 2025 – Worldcoin, the digital identity and cryptocurrency project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has secured $135 million in a token sale led by top-tier venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Bain$BANANAS31 Capital Crypto. The capital injection marks one of the largest crypto funding rounds of the year, underscoring growing investor confidence in decentralized identity systems.$ETH
The funding will support the expansion of Worldcoin’s World ID protocol—a proof-of-personhood network that uses iris-scanning orbs to verify unique human identities—and to further scale its developer ecosystem and global distribution.
“This raise allows us to double down on our mission: giving everyone on Earth a verified digital identity while maintaining privacy and accessibility,” said a Worldcoin spokesperson.
Worldcoin, which has sparked both enthusiasm and controversy, has been operating at the intersection of AI, privacy, and digital finance. The company’s biometric verification model has drawn scrutiny from regulators and privacy advocates, but proponents argue it offers a scalable solution to Sybil resistance and AI-era identity fraud.
With backing from crypto-native funds and long-term technology investors, Worldcoin is poised to ramp up operations across Latin America, Asia, and Africa—key regions for onboarding the next billion users.
a16z and Bain$BANANAS31 Capital Crypto have been vocal about supporting blockchain-native identity solutions. “Worldcoin represents a bold step toward solving one of the internet’s most intractable problems—proving personhood in a digital-first world,” said a16z Crypto General Partner Ali Yahya.
As crypto markets recover from recent volatility, large-scale investments like this signal renewed institutional interest in foundational Web3 infrastructure.
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