Tech entrepreneur Sam Altman’s crypto project WorldCoin is reportedly on the verge of securing $100 million worth of investment from “existing and new investors”.
Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, the Financial Times reports said Monday that WorldCoin is in “advanced talks” with a group of investors who jointly are expected to contribute some $100 million to further development of the project.
Current investors in WorldCoin include Andreessen Horowitz, better known as a16z, Barry Silbert’s crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group (DCG), and Coinbase Ventures, to name just a few.
This week’s Financial Times report follows an earlier report from March, when The Information first said Worldcoin was set to raise $100 millionBringing the total valuation of its WDC token to $3 billion.
Worldcoin is an ambitious crypto project that works on collecting scanned images of people’s eyes in exchange for cryptocurrency payments.
Several reports in the past have suggested that Sam Altman, who is also the CEO of the massively successful artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, joined Worldcoin because of his interest in Universal Basic Income (UBI), which he believes is what Worldcoin could enable.
The project has been highly active, especially in many developing countries, but Altman has received Criticism To collect potentially sensitive information from the wider crypto community from people who may not fully understand what they are participating in.
Among those criticized is NSA leaker (or whistleblower) Edward Snowden, who when Worldcoin first launched said that biometric data should not be used for any purpose, saying that “the human body is the ticket Not punch.”
It was reported in March last year Worldcoin pulled out of many countries Due to data privacy concerns and technical challenges.
Commenting on the development at the time, Alex Blania, one of WorldCoin’s co-founders, reminded people that the firm is still “a Series A company, not Uber.”
“Things are not right,” Blania said at the time.