Sam Altman's Eye-Scanning Orb Is Now Coming to the US

Sam Altman’s iris-scanning, identify-verification technology startup is expanding to the US, and will attempt to bridge the divide between blockchain-based financial networks and the payment services most often used here.

Altman and Alex Blania, a German physics researcher, announced at an event in San Francisco this evening that their venture-backed company, Tools for Humanity, is updating its “World” products—and announcing a series of high-profile partnerships with companies including Visa and Match Group.

World first launched as Worldcoin in July 2024, the brainchild of Altman, Blania, and Max Novendstern, who is no longer at the company. Blania serves as CEO, while Altman remains his most prominent backer. As of March 2025 the company had raised $240 million in venture capital funding from bold-name firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Bain Capital, and Coinbase Ventures, as well as individual investors like Reid Hoffman and the now-imprisoned Sam Bankman-Fried.

Altman has expressed concern about the amount of fakery that new AI tools will enable, including the generative AI tools pioneered by his other startup, OpenAI, which is valued at $300 billion. So the World app, and its hardware component, are Altman’s solution to the problem. It’s a device-and-app combo that scans people’s irises, creates a unique user ID, stores that information on the blockchain, and uses it as a form of identity verification. If enough people around the globe are using the World app to prove their identity, the thinking goes, it could ostensibly thwart scammers.

“Proving personhood” is a hard thing to productize, and whiffs of a scam have plagued the startup since it launched. The project has also been scrutinized by foreign governments for its biometric data-capture and storage policies. But Altman and Blania haven’t been deterred.

Tools for Humanity says it’s expanding the World services to the US starting tomorrow, May 1. This means that US-based users of the app will be able to sign up for World and join its network by having their identity verified through the app. This identity verification process requires that users get their eyeballs scanned, though, so Tools for Humanity has had to expand its physical footprint as well. The company says it’s opening up six “Apple-like stores” in cities across the US, including one in San Francisco, where the floor around a wooden structure holding about eight orbs was being polished on Wednesday night.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Additional reporting by Paresh Dave.