World Foundation, the nonprofit behind the World protocol, has raised $52.5 million through a strategic sale of its WLD token, with all tokens subject to a one-year lockup, the organization said Friday.

The first close of the token sale was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto, WLD treasury company Eightco Holdings (Nasdaq: ORBS), Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto and other investors, according to the foundation. It is not clear whether further closes are planned; a spokesperson declined to comment to The Block.

The foundation said the WLD tokens sold are intended for use within World Network and "do not represent investment interest or rights to profits or returns." A spokesperson added that purchased WLD does not confer any equity interest in Tools for Humanity, the for-profit company developing the project's hardware and software.

Proceeds will be used to expand World ID technology for organizations, consumers and AI agents globally as the project shifts focus from building core infrastructure to scaling usage. World said the raise coincides with three years since it went into production and an inflection in enterprise demand.

World offers a one-time Orb verification that issues a World ID to prove a user is a unique human without revealing their identity. The foundation said World ID is stored on a user’s phone and relies on advanced cryptography and anonymized multi-party computation, developed and open-sourced by the foundation, to preserve privacy.

"The need for Proof of Human is becoming acutely clear with the acceleration of AI development, and we see this in the influx of enterprise traction," Pantera Capital general partner Cosmo Jiang said in a statement. "We’re excited to continue supporting World’s mission at this inflection point in its growth."

The foundation cited the rapid rise of AI agents as driving demand for proof-of-human infrastructure across sectors such as digital advertising, online dating, voting systems, creative marketplaces and video communications. It highlighted the recent release of World ID 4.0, positioned for enterprise-scale integrations and enabling developers to build additional credentials using zero-knowledge proofs.

World ID is being integrated with platforms including Zoom, DocuSign, Okta, Vercel and Tinder, according to the foundation. More than 39 million people have joined World Network, including over 18 million who have completed Orb verification, with users generating more than 475 million World ID proofs since launch.

World was conceived by Sam Altman, Max Novendstern and Alex Blania to enable privacy-preserving proof of personhood in an AI-heavy internet. World Foundation oversees protocol governance, ecosystem grants and network operations, and aims to make the protocol economically self-sustaining via fees from applications rather than end users.

Tools for Humanity has raised roughly $240 million in venture equity, while World Foundation and related entities had previously raised $200 million via WLD sales. Including the new $52.5 million sale, total project funding is now around $492.5 million, per the foundation.

The project has drawn regulatory and privacy scrutiny over its biometric model, with authorities in Spain, Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong and the Philippines having investigated, restricted, suspended or fined aspects of its data collection. World said it continues to engage with regulators as it expands globally.

WLD is trading around $0.37, implying a market capitalization of about $1.31 billion, and is down roughly 2% over the past 24 hours, according to market data cited by The Block.

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