Mode Inc has acquired Trimbox and QR Code Reader, adding to seven buyouts over the past year as the AI training data company pushes a pay-for-consent model built around everyday user receipts, emails, and device data—while betting that legal scrutiny will acce
The next wave of AI may be learning from the most ordinary things people already generate—receipts, emails, and streams of daily device activity. Mode Inc is betting those traces are the new raw material, and it’s moving fast to collect them.
The company has acquired two consumer applications, bringing its total buyouts in the past year to seven. Mode Inc bought Trimbox, an inbox management app, and QR Code Reader, a code scanning app.
In an interview. Mode Inc CEO Dan Novaes said the company is not focusing on pay-per-gig contracting work from labor marketplaces. “We’re not really focused on just going after the Mechanical Turk or the Outlier/Scale AI gig workers. ” Novaes told Business Insider. naming pay-per-gig contracting sites. “It’s really about everyday consumers and doing the things that they do every single day.”.
That everyday behavior, Novaes said, can include uploading receipts from Amazon or Walmart purchases, streaming data, and wearable device data. The deals expand Mode Inc’s portfolio to include more than 100 million monthly users—people who hand over such data for cash or rewards.
Mode Inc sits in a wider ecosystem of startups paying people to collect and label information for machine learning. Novaes positioned Mode Inc as part of that broader surge, naming Scale AI, Mercor, and Handshake. In that model. contractors around the world can be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to gather and tag data. which companies use to improve products ranging from self-driving cars to chatbots made by OpenAI and Meta.
Novaes said he founded Mode Inc in 2019 with a goal that starts from the user’s time and device-generated data. “People [should] get paid for the time they spend on their devices and the data they generate,” he said.
The company’s scale is measurable in payouts. To date, Mode Inc has handed out $1 billion in earnings, savings, and incentives. Novaes said he has raised about over $80 million through crowdfunding, and he intends to take the company public in the next two years.
Where Mode Inc’s strategy meets legal pressure is part of the company’s urgency. Novaes argued that growing legal scrutiny around AI companies’ use of online content will spike demand for consent-based data collection. He pointed to recent lawsuits against Anthropic and Perplexity as examples of the kind of conflict pushing the market toward permission.
He also shared a specific example of what an AI lab client asked for: “‘Hey. we want people to submit forms that have handwriting on them. ’” Novaes said. referring to doctors’ notes or oil change receipts. “The point is they needed millions of documents of that. And so we basically sent out one notice to our users: Get some samples.”.
Mode Inc’s broader ambition is to build a portfolio of niche apps that collectively reach massive scale. Novaes said he is looking into an app that could make users’ photo libraries available for AI training. He laid out the math behind the plan: “There are two ways to get to a billion monthly active users. You can create the next Telegram or Twitter. or you can acquire 1. 000 apps that have a million monthly active users each.”.
The acquisitions—Trimbox and QR Code Reader—now take on a sharper meaning in that framework: they are another step toward distributing consent-based data collection across many everyday touchpoints.
By the time Mode Inc completes its current buying spree of seven deals in a year, it will have expanded a network already serving more than 100 million monthly users. The bet is that AI labs and major model developers won’t just want more data—they’ll want it from users who agreed to share it.
Mode Inc AI training data Trimbox QR Code Reader consent-based data collection Dan Novaes crowdfunding acquisition spree inbox management app receipts wearable data
Pay for consent my ass. So basically they’re just buying people’s data but with extra steps.
So they bought an app that scans QR codes and another inbox thing… that’s just creepy. I knew it was gonna be about receipts and emails anyway.
Wait, I thought this was about stopping AI training? Like the headline sounds like they’re doing something bad but then it says “pay-for-consent” and legal scrutiny like it’s fine? I’m confused. Also QR code reader can be harmless right? Unless my phone gets hacked or something.
Seven buyouts in a year is wild. Feels like they’re just grabbing random apps to funnel “everyday consumer stuff” into chatbots. Next thing you know they’ll be reading my receipts for “reward points” and then acting like it’s not surveillance. Mechanical Turk people aren’t the focus but it’s the same concept, it’s just different wording.