Who Owns Ground News?

Ground News began in 2017 in Kitchener, Ontario, inside the University of Waterloo's Velocity startup incubator. Kaur's path ran through aerospace: after NASA she moved to Rolls-Royce, and the contrast between engineering-grade data and the chaotic way people consume news pushed her toward the idea. Singh had already launched a startup through Waterloo's E-co-op program at 19.

The app launched publicly on April 27, 2018. Its central premise was that the same story looks different depending on the outlet's political lean. Ground News aggregates coverage from thousands of publications, rates each source's bias as left, center, or right using independent media monitoring organizations, and shows readers how a story is being framed differently.

Early traction came through product recognition. Apple featured the app in its New and Notable showcase, it reached the top of Product Hunt, and Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted it during a developer roundtable. Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology publicly recommended it.

The feature set deepened over time. The Blindspot Feed surfaces stories disproportionately covered by only one side of the spectrum. My News Bias tracks a reader's own consumption patterns. Bias, factuality, and ownership data are attached to each source, so users can see who owns an outlet and how reliably it reports.

Growth has been subscription-driven rather than viral. The company has stayed deliberately small, describing itself as a team of media outsiders. Through 2025 and 2026 the product expanded newsletters, podcasts analysis features, and personalization while competitors like AllSides and Ad Fontes Media remained reference sites rather than full aggregation apps.