Worldcoin Parent Cuts Staff as OpenAI Files IPO and Hayes Dumps WLD at $0.50

Worldcoin News

Tools for Humanity, the iris-scanning company co-founded by Sam Altman that builds the World digital identity network formerly branded as Worldcoin, has begun laying off staff. An internal email sent to employees on Monday framed the cuts as part of a strategic reset, with specifics promised at a Tuesday town hall. The firm, valued at $2.5 billion and backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital and Khosla Ventures, employs more than 500 people, though the number of affected roles remains unclear. The reductions land as the Orb, the device that scans irises to mint airdrop-style $WLD rewards, has yet to prove a durable revenue model for the network.

The staffing decision unfolds against a backdrop of mounting regulatory pressure on the identity project. South Korean authorities imposed a fine of 1.1 billion won, roughly $830,000, over alleged violations in how personal data was collected and transferred. Separately, Brazil's national data protection authority ordered the company to halt payments to residents in exchange for iris scans. These interventions compound the commercial challenge facing the Orb hardware, which must satisfy privacy regulators across multiple jurisdictions while expanding its verification footprint. Tuesday's planned briefing is expected to clarify how deep the cuts run and where remaining resources will be concentrated as the network recalibrates its operating priorities.

While the World network retrenches, Altman's flagship venture moved decisively in the opposite direction. OpenAI confidentially filed an S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the first formal step toward an initial public offering. The ChatGPT maker disclosed the move itself on social media, noting it expected the paperwork to leak. The company stressed no timeline has been set, saying it may stay private longer because certain initiatives are easier to pursue away from public markets. The confidential route lets regulators review filings before detailed financials become public, preserving flexibility on timing.

OpenAI's filing arrives amid an intensifying race among artificial intelligence developers to reach public markets. The company's most recent round closed in March at an $852 billion valuation, placing it among the world's most valuable private firms, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley reportedly advising on the draft. Rival Anthropic filed its own confidential S-1 about a week earlier after closing a $65 billion raise at a $965 billion valuation, edging past OpenAI. SpaceX leads the cohort, targeting a June 12 Nasdaq debut with reported demand near $150 billion against a $75 billion target, its order book closing this week.

Beyond the listing race, OpenAI is reportedly preparing a sweeping product overhaul internally codenamed Aria, aimed at converting its nearly one billion mostly free ChatGPT users into paying customers ahead of a potential offering. The plan would reshape ChatGPT into a so-called superapp bundling coding tools, AI agents, image generation and third-party integrations into a single interface modeled loosely on WeChat. Its Codex coding product has reportedly grown sixfold to more than five million weekly active users since a desktop application launched in February, with most of those users paying. Changes to the website and mobile apps are expected to roll out in the coming weeks.

$WLD's price action reflected the swirl of catalysts and shifting sentiment. Maelstrom co-founder Arthur Hayes sold his Worldcoin holdings just days after his firm labeled the token one of the cleanest proxies for the AI investment theme, a note that had predicted $WLD could reach $5 by August. The token briefly topped $0.60 on June 5 before sliding back near $0.40, with Hayes citing a sharply falling SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual chart as his reason to exit. The reversal echoed his recent pivots on other altcoin bets, fueling debate over the timing of the sale among his followers.

$WLD trades around $0.4978, up about 4.6% on the day with roughly $1.2 billion in volume, holding a constructive technical posture. An RSI near 62.7 sits in moderately bullish territory without flagging overbought conditions, while the MACD prints a bullish signal consistent with the broader uptrend visible on the daily candlestick structure. Immediate resistance clusters at $0.5361 and $0.5368, with a reclaim opening a path toward $0.6317. Initial support sits at $0.477, then $0.3814. A close below $0.477 would weaken the bull market thesis and expose the lower band toward $0.2729.