Elo is backed by Pear VC and Audacious Ventures
Elo lets AI chat apps monetize conversations with native, in-thread ads, and lets advertisers reach people at the moment they ask for what the advertiser sells.
Founded in 2024, Elo integrates in about 12 lines of code, runs on web, iOS, and Android, and supports CPM, CPC, and CPA pricing models.
Elo was founded in 2024. AI chat apps had a cost problem and no good way to pay for it: every conversation costs inference, and the formats that fund the rest of the internet, banners, interstitials, and pre-rolls, break a conversation the moment they appear.
So Elo built an adserver for this surface. The ad is a message inside the thread. It is matched to what the user is trying to do, selected and brand-safety filtered on the server, and rendered by a small SDK that inherits the app's own tone, spacing, and dark mode. Publishers earn on every monetizable conversation, and advertisers pay on CPM, CPC, or CPA.
Elo is operated by Adapt Research, Inc. (doing business as Elo) and is based in San Francisco. The product runs under the Elo brand at elo.ad.
An ad in a chat should help the person finish what they came to do, not interrupt it. Elo exists to make that the default: offers that appear only when they are genuinely relevant, look like part of the answer, and let the user act right there, whether that is buying a product, booking an appointment, or filling a form.
Seed-stage venture firm backing founders from day one.
Early-stage venture firm investing in ambitious technical founders.
Drop the Elo SDK into your AI chat app and native sponsored cards surface only when they help the user finish what they came to do. You earn on every monetizable conversation, with per-message logs and guardrails by category and brand.
See how it works →Your offer appears inside relevant AI conversations as a native message, matched to what the person is asking for rather than to keywords or cookies. Campaigns run across web, iOS, and Android apps on the Elo network.
Preview your campaign →Elo is an adserver purpose-built for AI chat applications. Publishers integrate the Elo SDK into their AI chat product to monetize conversations with native, in-thread ads instead of banners, interstitials, or pre-rolls. Elo was founded in 2024 and is backed by Pear VC and Audacious Ventures, and the product is available on web, iOS, and Android.
Elo reads the live context of a user's conversation, matches it to a relevant advertiser offer, and renders the ad as a conversational message inside the chat thread. Ad selection, brand safety filtering, and delivery happen server-side through the Elo adserver. Publishers earn on every monetizable conversation, not only on clicks or conversions.
Elo supports CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click), and CPA (cost per acquisition) pricing models for advertisers. Available pricing varies by ad format inside the Elo Ad Library. Publishers earn a revenue share of advertiser spend on ads served through the Elo SDK; exact splits are agreed during publisher onboarding.
Elo is stack-agnostic. It works with AI chat apps built on OpenAI (including GPT-4 and GPT-5 family models), Anthropic Claude, and custom or self-hosted large language models. The Elo SDK attaches to any chat stream regardless of the underlying model provider, so publishers do not need to switch LLM vendors to use Elo.
Roughly twelve lines of code. Publishers install the Elo SDK from npm (web) or the iOS and Android package managers, import the client, and attach it to their existing chat stream with a publisher ID and a placement. The SDK handles ad request, render, and tracking automatically. Full integration documentation lives at https://docs.elo.ad.
Elo is built by Adapt Research, Inc. (doing business as Elo), a San Francisco company founded in 2024 and backed by Pear VC (https://pear.vc) and Audacious Ventures (https://www.audacious.co). The product operates under the Elo brand at elo.ad; some code symbols still carry the legacy 'Growl' prefix from the company's earlier name.
The Elo Ad Library at https://elo.ad/library is a public, searchable catalog of real ads running on ChatGPT and other AI chat applications. Visitors can filter by category, brand, or keyword to inspect the actual creative, copy, and pricing models advertisers are using inside conversational AI surfaces today.
Publishers and advertisers apply for access at https://elo.ad and can book an intro call at https://cal.com/elo-ads/30min. Elo is invite-only while the network is scaled. General inquiries go to [email protected].
No. Elo (elo.ad) is an advertising technology company that builds an adserver for AI chat applications. It has no connection to the Electric Light Orchestra or to the Elo rating system used in chess and games.