AccessGrid raises $4.4 million to help turn phones into keychains

Auston Bunsen had a lot of free time after his company QuickNode reached a certain size. The company, a blockchain developer platform, was founded in 2017 and has subsequently raised around $60 million in funding, according to PitchBook.

Then Bensen started thinking about the fact that people might want to open their doors using their iPhones. “I eventually met some people at Apple and they decided to bet that I could help achieve their goals of enabling every company to bring the power of Apple Wallet to their doors,” Bensen told TechCrunch.

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

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

Currently, the access control industry is stuck in the late 1990s, Bensen said. Many systems must run locally and be separate from the cloud, or use unencrypted connections and ID technologies that can be easily hacked.

“AccessGrid replaces that with an API that issues unclonable credentials using encrypted payloads that can be instantly revoked via the cloud,” Bensen said. “We believe it is time to upgrade our physical security systems to 2025 standards.”

Cybersecurity is a big concern for a product like this, but Bensen says the company uses “military-grade” encryption in addition to double-digit encryption. “We use multi-factor authentication for all server access, and other standard cybersecurity practices,” he continued.

Bensen is building this product on his own, unlike when he built QuickNode with three other founders, and describes his fundraising journey as a “distraction.”

“Customer service is our goal, so anything other than that is a distraction for us,” he said.

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

AccessGrid competes with other startups in this space, including SwiftConnect and Sharry. But Bensen says his startup is different because it doesn’t sell service contracts or middleware to talk to existing hardware. “We’re just a play, just an API,” Bensen said, adding that it’s a developer platform, not an end-user app with API features.

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

Ultimately, Bensen wants every reader to upgrade access control in the United States. “Our hope is to create a world where everything you normally need a key to unlock is unlocked just because you are nearby,” he said. “You’ll never lose your key because it’s always with you. We want to make getting to where you belong faster, safer and more seamless for people and machines alike.”