AccessGrid raises $4.4M to help turn phones into key fobs

Auston Bunsen had a lot of free time after his company QuickNode reached a certain size. That company, a blockchain developer platform, was founded in 2017 and subsequently raised more than $100 million in funding, according to PitchBook.  

Then Bunsen started thinking about the fact that people would perhaps like to unlock their doors with their iPhone. “I eventually met with some folks at Apple and they decided to make a bet that I could help further their goals to enable every company to bring the power of Apple Wallet to their door,” Bunsen told TechCrunch.  

Bunsen left QuickNode last October and decided to work on his new idea: AccessGrid, which builds APIs that companies can use to manage digital key fobs directly within Apple and Google’s wallet platforms. 

“It works when your iPhone is locked, syncs automatically to your watch, and, in the case of iPhone, works even if your phone is dead,” Bunsen said. The company officially launched in April, and on Tuesday, announced a $4.4 million seed round led by Harlem Capital.  

Right now, Bunsen said, the access control industry is stuck in the late 1990s. Many systems must operate on-premises and are disconnected from the cloud, or use unencrypted communications and ID card technologies that are easily hackable.  

“AccessGrid replaces that with an API that issues uncloneable credentials using encrypted payloads that can be instantly revoked via the cloud,” Bunsen said. “We think it’s time to bring physical security systems up to 2025 standards.”

Cybersecurity is a big concern for a product like this, but Bunsen says the company uses “military-grade” encryption as well as dual-encryption. “We use multi-factor authentication for all server access, and other standard cybersecurity practices,” he continued.  

Bunsen is building this product alone, unlike when he built QuickNode with three other co-founders, and described his fundraising journey as a “distraction.”

“Serving customers is our purpose, so anything that is not that is a distraction for us,” he said.

Still, Bunsen met Henri Pierre-Jacques, the managing partner at Harlem Capital, through some friends in Miami. Other investors in the round came from Bunsen’s time at QuickNode, such as Marell Evans from Exceptional Capital, and Maya Bakhai from Spice Capital. AccessGrid also took part in the HF0 accelerator and received its first check from the program.  

AccessGrid is going up against other startups in this space, including SwiftConnect and Sharry. But Bunsen says his startup is different because it does not sell service contracts or middle-ware to talk to existing hardware devices. “We are a ‘pure play’, API-only,” Bunsen said, adding that it’s a developer platform, not an end-user app with API features.  

The fresh capital will be used to continue building the app’s security, as well as for new products and features. The company hopes to expand into automobile products soon.  

Eventually, Bunsen wants to upgrade every access control reader in the U.S. “Our hope is to create a world where everything you normally need a key for opens just because you’re nearby,” he said. “You’ll never lose your key because it’s always with you. We want to make getting into the places you belong faster, safer, and more seamless, for people and machines alike.”  

This piece was updated to reflect how much QuickNode had raised.