World Network secures $53M in funding to combat AI deepfakes

The company best known for scanning eyeballs in exchange for crypto just raised another $52.5 million, and this time the pitch is less about universal basic income and more about keeping AI-generated fakes off your Zoom calls.

World Network, the project backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and built by his company Tools for Humanity, closed a fresh funding round aimed squarely at expanding its deepfake-detection infrastructure. The raise follows a broader strategic shift at the organization, which rebranded from Worldcoin to World Network in October 2024 as it moved to position itself less as a crypto airdrop scheme and more as an identity layer for the internet.

From eyeball scans to enterprise deals

The core technology hasn’t changed. World Network still uses its signature Orb hardware to scan users’ irises and generate a biometric hash, which it then stores as a World ID. In English: it’s a way to prove you’re a real human without handing over your name, passport, or social security number.

What has changed is where that technology is being deployed. The platform announced a major upgrade that includes partnerships with Zoom, DocuSign, and Tinder, bringing its human-verification layer directly into applications where fake identities cause real damage.

The company launched its Deep Face feature alongside the October 2024 rebrand. The tool combines historical Orb biometric data with live facial authentication to flag synthetic media in real time during chats and video calls.

World Network is betting that its biometric moat, built from over 11 million verified user scans as of early 2025, gives it a dataset advantage that competitors cannot easily replicate.

The token strategy and institutional momentum

This latest $52.5 million raise is not the project’s first significant capital event in recent memory. In May 2025, World Network sold $135 million worth of WLD tokens in a private placement to investors including a16z and Bain Capital Crypto, with proceeds earmarked for U.S. expansion and broader network development. That token sale was expected to increase circulating supply, yet WLD saw a price increase of roughly 14% in its wake, which suggests investors interpreted the a16z and Bain participation as a quality signal rather than a dilution concern.

Institutional interest has escalated beyond venture capital. Grayscale filed for a WLD exchange-traded fund in July 2026, a move that would put the token in the same product category as Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.

World Network has faced scrutiny from data protection authorities in multiple countries over its iris-scanning practices, with regulators in Europe and parts of Asia raising questions about biometric data storage and consent. The company has pushed back, arguing that its system stores a mathematical representation of the iris rather than the image itself.

What this means for the verification market

The Tinder partnership is a useful illustration of where this lands commercially. Dating apps have battled fake profiles for years with middling success. Integrating a World ID check into the onboarding flow would let Tinder offer a verified-human badge with a level of assurance that profile photos and phone numbers simply cannot provide.

The Zoom and DocuSign integrations push that same logic into higher-stakes environments. Enterprise software vendors have strong incentives to offer identity assurance as a feature rather than outsource it, and World Network’s API approach lets them do exactly that without building biometric infrastructure themselves.

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