Tools for Humanity, the eyeball-scanning startup co-founded by Sam Altman, is laying off employees, according to an internal email viewed by Business Insider.
The company has struggled to show how its iris-scanning "Orb" can generate revenue and win over regulators, despite a $2.5 billion valuation and millions of sign-ups. Investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital, and Khosla Ventures have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the venture, according to PitchBook.
"As we enter the next step of our company strategy and operating priorities, we have made the hard decision to make changes to some roles and teams across the company," Tools for Humanity said in the email, which was sent to staffers Monday from the people team. The company will share details on its strategy and next steps in a town hall meeting on Tuesday, the email said.
It's unclear how many employees would be affected by the layoffs. Tools for Humanity employs more than 500 people, according to its website. The company didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tools for Humanity was founded on the idea of using iris scans to prove a person is human and not an AI bot. The startup's Orb—a shiny, volleyball-sized sphere—scans irises to generate a digital ID. People who participate can receive tokens of Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency distributed by the Cayman Island-based World Foundation.
Do you work for Tools for Humanity or have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at neinbinder.70. Use a personal email address, a nonwork device, and nonwork WiFi; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
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Nicole Einbinder is a correspondent on Business Insider’s enterprise team. Her work examines the impact of business on society, with a particular focus on tech and media.Nicole most recently wrote about Sam Altman's eye-scanning Orb startup, raising questions about the company's long-term strategy and revealing its hardcore culture. She's also written about sexual harassment in the venture capital industry, the underbelly of reality TV, and the "mini-DOGEs" that tried to copy Elon Musk's playbook. Other stories include a series about a multi-level marketing essential oil company, toxic workplace culture problems on Wall Street, and an investigation into a California businessman who set up what he claimed to be a public state high school in China.In 2024, she published a series with a team that exposed how Supreme Court decisions and laws, like the “deliberate indifference” standard, have made it nearly impossible for incarcerated plaintiffs to seek redress in the courts for violations of the Eighth Amendment. The project was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights at Columbia University, where she was a grantee. She was recognized as a finalist for the Livingston Award for National Reporting for the project.Nicole and a colleague reported a series in 2023 about a private prison healthcare company that employed a controversial bankruptcy maneuver called the “Texas Two-Step” to avoid liability for prisoner lawsuits alleging negligent care. That reporting led to the resignation of a federal bankruptcy judge and elicited inquiries from US Senators. The project was awarded the Silver Award from the Barlett and Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism, one of the highest honors in business journalism.In 2022, she was part of a team that published a project investigating rising homicidal violence against transgender people, which won the 2023 Scripps Howard Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment. She was also a consulting producer for the TV show "True Crime Story: It Couldn't Happen Here," which aired an episode about one of the cases that she reported, about the unsolved murder of a gender nonconforming teenager in Alabama.Her work has been recognized by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW), the New York Press Club, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the American Bar Association, among others.Before joining BI in 2019, Nicole worked for the investigative documentary series PBS Frontline. She graduated with honors from the University of Washington and Columbia Journalism School, where she was the recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship.Get in touch! Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at neinbinder.70 or +1 (714) 833-8487 using a non-work phone, via encrypted email at [email protected], or via standard email at [email protected].
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