Tech
Sam Altman’s Worldcoin aims for partnerships with PayPal and OpenAI
Tools for Humanity, the company behind it Sam Altmannthe iris scanning project, World currencyhas hinted that it may soon partner with major technology and financial companies Bloomberg.
“There are some natural things about how we could and will work together,” Alex Blania, CEO of Tools for Humanity, said of a potential partnership with OpenAI. “But it’s nothing we’re ready to announce yet.” Blania added that the company has had “conversations” with PayPalbut that there had been no “concrete” developments.
A spokesperson for Tools for Humanity told Fortune: “We have nothing else to share at this time.” Neither PayPal neither OpenAI immediately responded to requests for comment.
A collaboration with a major tech company wouldn’t be Worldcoin’s first. Last year the company cooperated Okaya cybersecurity company, to create a “log in with Worldcoin” authentication service, which developers could use instead of or in addition to similar tools Apple AND Googleaccording to Bloomberg.
Three arrows participated in Tools for Humanity’s $25 million funding round in October 2021 that valued the company at $1 billion, according to data from funding tracker Dealroom. Co-founder of FTX Sam Bankman Fried he was also an early investor.
What is Worldcoin?
According to its website, Worldcoin is an “open, free, and privacy-preserving protocol, intended to be the largest public identity and financial network in the world.”
It hopes to authenticate its “humanity” in an age of bots and deepfakes by asking users to do so fix a sphere, which then converts its biometric image into an impenetrable string of numbers. When combined with an algorithm, the code verifies an individual as a unique human being, providing confirmation via a World ID, which is stored in your World App. As a reward for scanning, users can receive Worldcoin tokens, which currently cost around $5.
“At this point, the question is not whether there will be proof of personal identity: the question is: will it be open source, decentralized and privacy-preserving?” Tiago Sada, Product Manager at Tools for Humanity, already told Fortune.
But the spheres have been banned in several European countries due to concerns about data collection; Germany is the only market where Worldcoin is currently able to collect biometric data. Additionally, others have noted how Altman, co-founder and president of Tools for Humanity, is selling a solution to problems accelerated by another of his companies, OpenAI.
The rate of new interest for the plan remains unclear, as the market capitalization of Worldcoin tokens has nearly halved over the past month to around $942 million, according to data from CoinGecko.
In an effort to expand adoption, Worldcoin Foundation, the company behind World currencylast week announced World Chain, an open-source, permissionless layer 2 platform scheduled to launch in mid-2024. Blockchain will be deeply intertwined with the Worldcoin Protocol and will give preferential treatment to users with a World ID.