EarnOS, a digital advertising company that pays people real money for verified online actions through a mobile app called ero, today announced $18.5 million in strategic funding and its official launch out of beta across the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The app launches with more than $30 million in annualized committed reward missions from brands spanning rideshare, retail, streaming, and consumer finance.
The funding includes a $6 million Pre-Series A round led by 1kx, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, and Social Graph Ventures, and a four-year, $12.5 million non-dilutive strategic investment from Verona. EarnOS launched ero as the internet’s engagement signals become harder to trust. Bots, fake traffic, and AI-generated content are flooding digital channels with more than 50% of the internet now identified as bot-driven, while industry estimates suggest that up to 25% of performance advertising spend is lost to bots and invalid traffic. EarnOS gives brands a new model by letting them pay people for verified online actions rather than impressions, clicks, or engagement signals that are inflated, automated, or fake.
“At its core, this funding round is about building the Verified Internet,” said Phil George, Founder and CEO of EarnOS. “Brands are losing over $100B a year to bots, fake engagement, and AI-generated noise. Our app, ero, inverts that model by letting brands pay only for real, verified outcomes, while people earn real money for the value they already create online.”
Verification on ero is powered by privacy-preserving zkTLS technology, which allows the platform to confirm identity and behavior without collecting or storing sensitive user data. For users, that means transparency and control. For brands, it means high-confidence engagement, improved return on ad spend, and a direct connection to real people.
“EarnOS is tackling one of the biggest unsolved problems on the internet: how do you prove what’s real? As AI and bots reshape online environments, the ability to verify identity and take action without sacrificing privacy becomes foundational,” said Peter Pan, Partner at 1kx. “EarnOS isn’t just changing advertising; it’s building new economic rails for the internet. This investment will support the team as they scale this new model globally.”
The EarnOS app, ero, is powered by Verona, with Turnkey and Rain providing the infrastructure behind its payment capabilities. Verona supports verification, onboarding, and reward delivery at a global scale. Turnkey provides secure, non-custodial wallet infrastructure, and Rain supports the card infrastructure that helps turn earned rewards into real-world spending power, subject to applicable eligibility, verification, and program requirements.
“Brands are facing a sea of sameness online,” said John Shiel, Senior Content and Engagement Manager at Nike Innovation Labs. “EarnOS creates an opportunity to make brand interactions fun, participatory, and transparent, and to get away from AI slop.”
To support this next phase of growth, EarnOS has appointed longtime Uber executive Harrison Kennedy as Head of Growth Strategy and Expansion. Kennedy helped scale Uber Eats’ business across the Asia-Pacific region, led new market entries in Japan, and was one of Uber’s longest-tenured growth leaders in the region.
“What EarnOS is building reminds me of Uber in the early days,” said Kennedy. “Brands know their current models are broken. EarnOS gives them a fundamentally better way to reach real customers, while making the experience genuinely rewarding for users.”
