The company, originally named Groundbase, was launched in December 2016 by Gerard Niemira,[2] and Krista Davis, who both worked on the digital outreach team for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

[3][4] In January 2019, the company was acquired by Acronym, a liberal-leaning political nonprofit organization[1] for which Niemira was also the COO and CTO.

[1][15] James "Jimmy" Hickey, COO, was an engineering manager for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and previously was part of Sprinklr and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

[14] Krista Davis, CTO and Chief Architect, was previously a software engineer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.

[22] Gerardo Niemira, the CEO of Shadow Inc., which created the app, stated that technology used by Democrats in prior elections was a "shitshow" and "tangled morass".

[32] The Nevada Democratic Party paid Shadow $58,000 for its caucus reporting app,[1] though it announced it would no longer use it,[33] and instead used Google Forms on iPads.

[3][12] The Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Kirsten Gillibrand presidential campaigns all made payments to the company.

[3][5] The Buttigieg campaign paid $42,500 to the company in July 2019 for "software rights and subscriptions" for a text-message service.

[36] Shadow Inc. has worked closely with Democratic Party-affiliated companies, including Lockwood Strategy and FWIW Media.

[12][35] Shadow Inc's parent company Acronym has received large donations from hedge fund managers Seth Klarman and Donald Sussman, venture capitalist Michael Moritz, as well as film directors and producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.