Why Kinverse.

In March 2025, 23andMe went bankrupt. Fifteen million people had uploaded their raw DNA data there, trusting that a reputable genealogy company would take good care of it. Then, in the bankruptcy proceedings, pharma companies showed up as bidders. Data meant for a birthday gift was suddenly up for sale.

We thought back then: if this can happen so easily, then this can't be the default.

Kinverse is our attempt at a different answer. A place where the most important data of your life — who is related to whom, who lived when and where, which stories get passed down in your family — belongs to you. Period. Not „yours, while we're still in business". Not „yours, unless we get acquired". Yours.

What family really is

Most genealogy tools treat family like a database — names, dates, relationships. Not one of them understood that a grandmother is more than the entry „1928–2014". She is the stories she told. She is the apricot jam cooked every summer. She is the reason a particular branch of a family even exists today.

Family is more than a tree. Kinverse is the software that finally treats it that way. We're building a living graph of relationships, stories, and generations — not a table, but a network that branches the way real life does.

That may sound grand. But anyone who has ever tried to explain to a second cousin how she's related to her great-aunt's sister-in-law knows: the world of kinship is complicated. We built our own engine for it, because no existing software got the depth right. Look at the Habsburg demo — with uncle-niece marriages, illegitimate children, cousin-cousin marriages. The engine handles it. Cleanly, correctly, across every generation.

What will never happen

Three things we promise you in writing.

We will not sell your data. Not to pharma companies, not to insurers, not to marketing platforms. No ads on the platform, no affiliate tracking in the background. The Fair Pricing Pledge makes this legally binding.

We will not track you. No cookies that follow you across the web. No profiles we sell to third parties. Your family data does not leave the EU — Postgres in Frankfurt, Neo4j graph in Frankfurt, photos in an EU bucket, fully GDPR-compliant from day one.

We will not artificially resurrect the deceased. No AI avatar of your late father writing you love letters on demand. No deathbot mimicking his voice. Memory is sacred — the Digital Afterlife Charter commits us to that in writing.

Why now

Kinverse is not a risky gamble with someone else's money — we're self-funding the early phase out of our own pocket, through INVENTIO GmbH. That lets us make promises we can actually keep.

The timing isn't accidental. The 23andMe crash made it visible what can happen when you entrust precious family data to the wrong company. At the same time, the technical tools are finally here: AI can transcribe Kurrent script, read church registers digitally, weave stories from raw data. The German-speaking region — Archion, Matricula, CompGen — has archival depth no US provider reaches. Whoever takes that seriously builds a brand for all of German-speaking Europe.

We start with the family anyone can build. Phase 2 brings the DACH archives and AI transcription. Phase 3 brings Voice Memory on the landline — grandparents tell their stories, Kinverse calls, listens, transcribes. No app. No smartphone. On a receiver they know.

What you can do now

Look at the two live demos. The House of Habsburg across 18 generations, the British royal family from William the Conqueror to Charles III. Click on a person, read the biography, follow the kinship lines. That's the real product, not a stylized version.

If that convinces you: join the waitlist. We're opening the app gradually. If you want to write to us — kontakt@kinverse.family.