Mode Inc Acquires Trimbox and QR Code Reader, Expanding to 100 Million Monthly Users

Mode Inc acquired Trimbox, an inbox management app, and QR Code Reader, a code scanning app. The purchases bring the company's total acquisitions over the past year to seven. The deals expand Mode Inc's portfolio to more than 100 million monthly users.

Those users submit data such as receipts from Amazon or Walmart purchases, streaming data, and wearable device data in exchange for cash or rewards. To date, Mode Inc has paid out $1 billion in earnings, savings, and incentives. Dan Novaes founded Mode Inc in 2019 so people could get paid for time spent on devices and data generated.

Novaes has raised over $80 million through crowdfunding. "We're not really focused on just going after the Mechanical Turk or the Outlier/Scale AI gig workers," Novaes told Business Insider. He said an AI lab client recently requested millions of documents containing handwriting, such as doctors' notes or oil change receipts.

Novaes said he is looking into an app that could make users' photo libraries available for AI training. He stated that growing legal scrutiny around AI companies' use of online content will increase demand for consent-based data collection. Novaes said he intends to take Mode Inc public in the next two years.

"There are two ways to get to a billion monthly active users," he said.