Verona, the company formerly known as XION, announced on June 17 an $18.5M fundraise alongside a rebrand from web3 infrastructure provider to what it calls the “intelligence layer for AI agents,” according to a GlobeNewsWire press release. The round brings total funding to $36M, with investors including Animoca Brands, Multicoin Capital, and HashKey Capital.
The Pivot
XION originally built technology to abstract away blockchain complexity for consumer applications. The rebrand reframes that same verification infrastructure for a different buyer: AI agents that need to act on sensitive, real-world data.
The core thesis, according to founder and CEO Anthony Anzalone, is that verified data does not currently exist for AI agents in a reusable form. Data either gets re-verified for every application, or gets discarded after a single use. In both cases, an agent cannot carry verified credentials from one service to another. “Verona is synonymous with truth,” Anzalone said in the announcement. “AI is the next place where that matters most.”
EarnOS and the Consumer Play
The company simultaneously launched EarnOS, a consumer product that enables users to delegate agentic tasks (booking, payments, purchasing) while maintaining cryptographic proof of data ownership. Agents authorized by a user can reuse verified data across applications without re-verification or data exposure. Verona is backing the launch with $30M in brand spend, per the press release.
The company claims its verification technology currently powers experiences across 115+ global brands including Uber, Amazon, Nike, and BMW, with over 69 million verified interactions across more than 3 million users.
The Agent Data Trust Market
Verona enters a crowded and fast-moving segment of agent infrastructure. In the past week alone, Arcade AI raised $60M in Series A funding for its agent authorization platform, and Capsa AI closed an $18M Series A for agent infrastructure in private capital. Akamai launched its Know Your Agent protocol, and TrueFoundry shipped Agent Gateway as a unified control plane.
The common thread across all of these plays is that agents acting autonomously need identity, authorization, and data verification infrastructure that current systems were not built to provide. Verona is betting that cryptographic verification from its web3 origins translates directly to that need. Whether enterprise buyers and agent framework developers adopt a web3-native verification layer over purpose-built agent authorization tools remains the open question.