Worldcoin Eyes Partnership with OpenAI Despite Regulatory Setbacks

For Worldcoin, the project that scans people’s irises in order to give them a digital identity and crypto tokens, the race to gather as many users as possible has been marked by increasing regulatory scrutiny and data privacy concerns. These setbacks, which included investigators raiding six of what the startup described as “orb verification locations” in Hong Kong, don’t appear to have curtailed its ambitions. The group is now aiming to team up with some of the biggest names in tech — including OpenAI.

Tools for Humanity, the company behind Worldcoin, has faced probes in Germany and Argentina and a ban in Kenya. Most recently, regulators in Spain and Portugal alleged that children were allowed to submit to eye scans and obtain a blockchain-based identity known as a World ID and ordered the project to stop collecting data. Worldcoin’s token, which trades under the ticker WLD, is not available to market participants in the US due to regulatory concerns.