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World — Startup ProfileProof of personhood for the AI ageHQ: San Francisco, CA, United States | Founded: 2019 | Employees: 300+ | Stage: Late Stage VC | Website: https://world.orgAboutWorld is a proof-of-personhood protocol developed by Tools for Humanity, the technology company co-founded in 2019 by Sam Altman (Chairman, CEO of OpenAI), Alex Blania (CEO of Tools for Humanity) and Max Novendstern. Headquartered in San Francisco with major operations in Berlin (hardware), Erlangen and Munich, World was created to build a global, privacy-preserving identity and financial network for the age of AI. Its core primitive is World ID — a zero-knowledge credential that proves a user is a unique human without revealing underlying biometrics — issued after an iris scan by the custom-built Orb. The Orb converts an iris image into an encrypted iris code, checks uniqueness, then deletes the image by default under its SMPC/AMPC privacy architecture.Around World ID, Tools for HumanitKey Metrics

Latest Valuation: $3B (Series C, May 2023)

FDV at Token Launch: $6B+ WLD (July 2023)

Total Funding: $240M

Verified Users: 10M+ (2024), 20M+ on network 2025

Orbs Deployed: 5,000+

Countries Live: 160+

Funding Rounds

Round: $25M (2021-10-21) — Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)

Round: $100M (2022-03-23) — Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Khosla Ventures

Round: $115M (2023-05-25) — Blockchain Capital

Round: — (2023-07-24) — World Assets Ltd. (Foundation subsidiary)

Key People

Alex Blania

Sam Altman

Max Novendstern

Tiago Sada

Key Competitors

BrightID —

Civic (Civic Pass) —

Proof of Humanity (Kleros) —

Government eID (e-Estonia, Malaysia MyDigital, Taiwan) —

Timeline Highlights

2024-10-17: Rebrand to World, World Chain L2 and 10M verified

2023-07-24: Worldcoin launches out of beta; WLD token live

2023-05-25: Series C: $115M at $3B led by Blockchain Capital

2022-03-23: Series B: $100M at $3B

2021-10-21: Series A: $25M at ~$1B