Bitcoin believers hope to one day use the cryptocurrency in every facet of their financial lives, from paying for coffee to taking out loans.
Now, they have an option to use the cryptocurrency in life after death. On Tuesday, the Bitcoin-backed and A.I.-powered life insurer Meanwhile announced that it had raised $19 million to help deceased Bitcoiners pay out surviving loved ones in crypto.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and Lachy Groom, one of the original employees at payments giant Stripe, co-led the first round of seed funding. Gradient Ventures, a Google-backed venture capital fund, led a second round. Other participants were Mouro Capital, MS&AD, and Hudson Structured Capital Management.
“Meanwhile is sitting at the confluence of the A.I. and digital assets transformation,” Anna Patterson, managing partner at Gradient Ventures, said in a statement. “The team has an opportunity to change how consumers use digital money and set a new standard for tech-enabled life insurance providers.”
The capital raise, which values Meanwhile at $100 million, according to cofounder and CEO Zac Townsend, is just one of Sam Altman’s recent investments at the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence. Worldcoin, a project he helped found that aims to persuade billions of users to scan their irises to prove they’re human, recently announced a funding round of $115 million.
In 2020, Townsend and cofounder Max Gasner decided to build a life insurance company that only collects and distributes Bitcoin—“a life insurance company for the crypto economy,” he told Fortune.
“We’re believers that there will be this Bitcoin economy, and that this is going to grow over time,” he added.
So he and Gasner, who share a background in fintech, set to work, eventually securing approval as a licensed and regulated life insurance company in Bermuda. (Meanwhile is not currently licensed or registered as a life insurance company in the U.S.)
Using A.I. to issue claims and evaluate the health risks of applicants, the firm, which has seven employees, only deals in Bitcoin. Customers pay monthly premiums in crypto, and claims are paid out in crypto. To make money, Meanwhile, like many other life insurance providers, lends out a portion of what’s collected in monthly premiums and charges interest on the loans.
Ultimately, Townsend trusts his product with his life. He has, he told Fortune, taken out his very own Bitcoin life insurance policy.
