Grape ID

Tired of spam? Believe it or not, so are the advertisers who send it.

People generally ignore ads from companies, so companies send more, hoping to make sales. Meanwhile, consumers feel overwhelmed with these ads and quickly shut down, ignoring everything that’s sent to them.

What’s the solution? Grape ID has one.

This startup’s marketplace enables advertisers to pay consumers to engage with their ads. It delivers relevant ads to users based on their interests, creating a more effective, less annoying way for companies to put ads in front of potential customers.

Advertisers send 60% to 90% of spam. That’s fifty-eight trillion spam emails a year and fifty-two billion “robocalls.”

The problem, of course, is that few people enjoy getting all of these emails and calls. As a result, spam wastes everyone’s time. Furthermore, it quickly creates security risks, and even causes consumers to miss messages they actually want to see.

This is where Grape ID can help both advertisers and consumers. Here’s how it works:

Consumers simply download an app to meet “Grape” — a personal-identity agent. Grape is like having a private AI bot to represent them on the internet. It asks a few questions and verifies their identity to protect their account.

Next, users set their hourly rate so advertisers know how much to pay them per ad, then they swipe to earn cash for viewing those ads. Swipe right if the ad was interesting or relevant, and swipe left if not.

Additionally, Grape gives people access to more than 200 Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Their conversations help Grape understand user interests to improve ad matching. Grape also protects privacy by hiding user data from AI providers. Chats are stored with Grape — not AI providers.

For advertisers, the process begins with creating a customer profile and uploading an ad. Then, they set their bid price.

Unlike existing ad platforms that charge advertisers for views, impressions, and other wasteful metrics, Grape only requires advertisers to pay for genuine engagement like a click or feedback.

Grape charges a transaction fee for each ad engagement. This fee ranges from 30% to 50%. When an advertiser pays a dollar for engagement, the consumer earns $0.70 as a cash reward and Grape ID earns $0.30.

Demand for Grape’s marketplace is strong. After seeing a rough mockup, seventy-six percent of consumers and ninety-three percent of advertisers signed up to the waitlist.

Grape ID launched an initial version of its app in March 2023 and continued testing it throughout 2024. In April 2025, the company completed a functional prototype and plans to launch it three months after raising one million dollars through its current crowdfunding campaign.

The company has been issued four patents and three trademarks. And it has four-and-a-half million dollars in pending R&D grants from the National Science Foundation.

This year, Grape ID projects to generate $70,000 in revenue, and eventually reach $300 million in revenue. Notably, the company has twenty million dollars in potential sales through a current enterprise sales pipeline of Gmail, Yahoo!, Verizon, and Microsoft.

Team Background

Rob Andersen - Founder & CEO

Rob is an eight-time startup founder who started Grape ID out of personal frustration.

In 2018, he was a victim of five data breaches and identity theft that taught him that businesses control much of your data. That’s why he started Grape ID — to enable consumers to keep control of their data.

On social media, Rob is known as the “Anti Spam Guy.” Prior to starting Grape ID, he was an independent property and casualty insurance adjuster. And before that, he owned MAD Hovercraft, a company manufacturing hovercraft vehicles.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Entrepreneurial Finance from BYU.

Maxim Chemerisiuk - Chief Architect

Maxim has fifteen years of experience in tech, mainly as a full-stack software developer.

In addition to his role with Grape ID, he is a senior-software engineer with Google. And before that, he founded a ride-sharing app that was No. 2 in his local market (just behind Uber).

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Belarusian State University.

Co-Investors