The evolving landscape of artificial intelligence is turning to everyday personal data—such as images, invoices, and emails—to enhance its capabilities. A pioneering startup, Mode Inc, is aiming to capitalize on this trend by enabling individuals to monetize their data while expanding its influence through strategic acquisitions.
In the past year, Mode Inc has significantly grown its portfolio by acquiring seven consumer applications, including the inbox management tool Trimbox and a QR code scanning application. This move seeks to attract a wider base of users, not just those engaged in gig economy platforms like Mechanical Turk or Outlier/Scale AI.
According to Dan Novaes, CEO of Mode Inc, the goal is to engage everyday users and incentivize them for routine activities like uploading receipts from retailers such as Amazon and Walmart, as well as data from streaming services and wearable technology. With these acquisitions, the company's user base has soared to over 100 million monthly active participants, who can earn rewards for sharing their data.
While not positioned as a direct rival, Mode Inc is part of a growing ecosystem of startups, including Scale AI and Mercor, which pay contractors globally to gather and label critical data used to advance technologies ranging from autonomous vehicles to AI-driven chatbots created by OpenAI and Meta.
Founded in 2019, Mode’s mission is to compensate individuals for the time they invest on their devices and the data they produce. The company has already disbursed approximately $1 billion in earnings, savings, and various incentives. With over $80 million raised through crowdfunding efforts, Novaes has plans to take the company public within the next two years.
Novaes also indicated that increasing legal scrutiny of how AI companies utilize online content—highlighted by recent lawsuits against entities like Anthropic and Perplexity—will likely fuel a demand for data collected with user consent. He illustrated this with a recent request from a client in need of handwritten document samples, such as doctor's notes and vehicle service receipts, expressing the need for millions of such documents.
Looking ahead, Mode aims to create a diverse suite of niche applications that together can achieve significant user engagement. Novaes expressed ambition to develop an app that could leverage users’ photo libraries for AI training purposes, stating, "There are two paths to a billion monthly active users: you can launch the next big social media platform or acquire a multitude of smaller apps that each draw a million users."
