AccessGrid has raised $4.4 million to bring building access into the smartphone era. The Miami-based startup, founded by QuickNode co-founder Auston Bunsen, has built a simple API that lets property operators issue secure digital keys directly to Apple and Google Wallet – no app, plastic card, or fob required.
Investors in this round include Harlem Capital, Spice Capital, Exceptional Capital, CEAS Investments, Ex Ante, Third Sphere, and HF0.
The pitch is simple. Most access systems still lean on plastic cards and fobs that can be cloned. Meanwhile, every modern phone ships with hardware that protects payments at massive scale.
AccessGrid connects those dots. Its API issues and manages wallet-native credentials so people can get into offices, apartments, and hotels with the devices they already carry. It works with Apple Watch. It does not require a separate app. It can function even if a device is locked or out of battery.
Bunsen’s original insight came while working with Apple Wallet’s event ticket and loyalty flows. The two-person team of Bunson [pictured above] plus Senior Product Designer Nathali Amaro is building a ‘Stripe for NFC keys’ solution. By abstracting wallet provisioning, cryptographic key management, and hardware integrations, the company asserts that tasks that once took months now collapse into a single API call.
The scale of the problem helps explain investor interest. Access control is a global market measured in tens of billions of dollars. A large share of U.S. deployments still runs on legacy formats that are easy to copy or that even contain known backdoors from the manufacturing process. That creates risk for offices, multi-family housing, and critical infrastructure.
The smartphone stack offers a more modern path. Secure Enclave chips sign and store credentials, which are non-cloneable and revocable in real time. AccessGrid wants to be the layer that makes this practical for operators without ripping and replacing readers.
The funding also marks another Miami-origin story that is selling beyond the region. “Miami has been helpful for early customers, but our largest customers are definitely out of state,” Bunsen told Refresh Miami. That tracks with the product’s focus on integrators, property managers, and OEMs who need standard tooling wherever they operate.
Investors are framing AccessGrid as infrastructure rather than a point solution. “We’re excited to partner with Auston, a repeat founder who is well-versed in bringing emerging infrastructure to market,” commented Henri Pierre-Jacques, Managing Partner at Harlem Capital, in the press release.
He added, “AccessGrid is building critical infrastructure at the intersection of identity, hardware, and access, with the potential to redefine how we interact with the physical world.”
Bunsen’s résumé supports the infrastructure angle. At QuickNode, he helped turn developer access to blockchain networks into a scaled service, a background that maps neatly to standardizing fragmented access-control interfaces. AccessGrid is trying to do for doors what developer platforms did for payments and messaging: hide the complexity behind a predictable API and let specialists handle the cryptography and device quirks.
The interesting question now is adoption speed. If operators can add wallet credentials without a costly hardware swap, the path widens. If users can tap a phone or watch without downloading an app, friction drops. If credentials are issued and revoked over an API, security events become easier to manage. Each of those changes pulls a very old category toward modern software patterns.
As the lines between cybersecurity and physical security continue to blur, AccessGrid’s bet is that every lock will eventually speak the same digital language, and every phone will be the key.
Founder Auston Bunsen and Nathali Amaro, AccessGrid’s Senior Product Designer.
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I am a Miami-based technology researcher and writer with a passion for sharing stories about the South Florida tech ecosystem. I particularly enjoy learning about GovTech startups, cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence, and innovators that leverage technology to transform society for the better. Always open for pitches via Twitter @rileywk or www.RileyKaminer.com.
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