OpenAI CEO Altman Nears $100M for Worldcoin Crypto Startup

Sam Altman, the well-known CEO of OpenAI, the firm that introduced ChatGPT to the world, is apparently on the verge of securing $100 million in funding for his idea to use iris-scanning technology to establish Worldcoin, a safe worldwide cryptocurrency.

The Financial Times reported that the Worldcoin team has created a strategy to address two issues that have arisen as artificial intelligence has become more sophisticated: telling humans apart from robots and offering some form of universal basic income to make up for job losses brought on by AI.

According to the company’s website, its method uses an orb that uses iris biometrics to build a person’s unique identification and produce a digital World ID that can be used anonymously in many commonplace applications without disclosing the users identify. The objective is to develop a system that offers universal basic income in the form of free global money.

Worldcoin has secured new funding from both new and existing investors, including Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and internet entrepreneur Reid Hoffman. A previous token sale valued the total supply of the company’s tokens at $3 billion, according to the tech-focused publication The Information.

The cryptocurrency industry has had a challenging year, with several crypto firms failing and the prices of many tokens dropping. The demise of FTX, which was sponsored by the venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, and Thoma Bravo, hastened the decrease in token values and led numerous blue-chip funds to scale back their sector bets.

Amid these challenges, Worldcoin’s fundraising success is seen as a positive development for the sector.