OpenAI’s Sam Altman raises $115 mln for Worldcoin crypto project

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May 25 (Reuters) — Ope­nAI Chief Exec­u­tive Sam Alt­man has raised $115 mil­lion in a Series C fund­ing round led by Blockchain Cap­i­tal for a cryp­tocur­ren­cy project he co-founded.

The project, World­coin, aims to dis­trib­ute a cryp­to token to peo­ple “just for being a unique indi­vid­ual”. The project uses a device to scan iris­es to con­firm their iden­ti­ty, after which they are giv­en the tokens for free.

World­coin has faced crit­i­cism for per­ceived pri­va­cy risks. In response to Alt­man’s tweet intro­duc­ing the project in 2021, for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den tweet­ed, “Don’t cat­a­logue eyeballs”.

The token will not be avail­able to peo­ple in the Unit­ed States and some oth­er coun­tries, accord­ing to World­coin’s website.

The dig­i­tal asset space is look­ing to regain pop­u­lar­i­ty after a bruis­ing 2022 that saw sev­er­al cryp­to ven­tures col­lapse, includ­ing the spec­tac­u­lar implo­sion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.

Investors includ­ing a16z cryp­to, Bain Cap­i­tal Cryp­to and Dis­trib­uted Glob­al also par­tic­i­pat­ed in World­coin’s lat­est fundraise.

Alt­man and Ope­nAI, the start­up behind Chat­G­PT, have been in the spot­light since late last year, with inter­est in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence grow­ing by leaps and bounds. He tes­ti­fied before a U.S. Sen­ate pan­el last week and called for reg­u­la­tion of the technology.

Report­ing by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Ben­galu­ru and Krys­tal Hu in New York; Addi­tion­al report­ing by Niket Nis­hant; Edit­ing by Shounak Dasgupta

Our Stan­dards: The Thom­son Reuters Trust Principles.

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