Grounds Up: Business Tycoon

Grounds Up: Business Tycoon

CEO Simulator: Café to AI Lab

8 ratings
5 reviews
$2.99

Details

Released
November 5, 2026
Updated
November 8, 2026
Grounds Up: Business Tycoon video #1 for iPhone
Grounds Up: Business Tycoon screenshot #2 for iPhone
Grounds Up: Business Tycoon screenshot #3 for iPhone
Grounds Up: Business Tycoon screenshot #4 for iPhone
Grounds Up: Business Tycoon screenshot #5 for iPhone
Grounds Up: Business Tycoon screenshot #6 for iPhone
Grounds Up: Business Tycoon screenshot #7 for iPhone
Grounds Up: Business Tycoon screenshot #8 for iPhone
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About

Grounds Up is a single-player business tycoon game for iPhone. You open your first small café on a busy street. Each week you set prices, pay your people, pick your coffee and read the results. Then the company grows far beyond coffee: more cafés in more cities, hotels, an AI lab and a fund of your own. Time moves only when you tap the date, one week at a time. There is no timer and no game over. Everything in the game is made up: the companies, the people, the banks and the money. It is a game, not a financial service, and nothing in it is financial advice. A GROUP THAT KEEPS GROWING • Build cafés in eight cities: Osaka, Tokyo, New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Berlin and São Paulo. • Choose the look, the machines, the menu and the prices of every café, and hire managers to run them. • Open hotels. Pick the class, the rooms and the rates, and read the guest reviews. • Start an AI lab and grow it through research, products and funding rounds. • Run a fund with outside investors and a record that sets the size of the next one. • Lease offices, buy property, and buy and name landmarks. STAKES, BOARDS AND VOTES • Buy shares in listed companies and back startups through their funding rounds. • Build a stake big enough for a seat on the board, then more seats, then the chair. • Sit in board meetings. Read the facts, weigh the options and vote, or let your seats vote for you. • Win control of a company and merge it into your group. RIVALS AND RECORDS • 300 rival tycoons grow their own fortunes while you build yours. • Climb the rich list and chase records, from your first billion up. • Play Relaxed, Normal, Hard or Tycoon, with up to five rival companies. PAY ONCE, NOTHING ELSE TO BUY • One payment on the App Store. • No ads. No in-app purchases. No subscription. • Works offline. The game never needs the internet. • No account. No tracking. Keep up to ten games on your phone. All companies, people and money in the game are made up. Nothing here is financial advice.
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+2

What's New in Grounds Up

1.1

November 8, 2026

A big update. • A new business: the property developer. Buy plots on the map, choose what to build: apartments, offices and even malls. • Bigger maps for all eight cities, each with a new district, more plots and more hotel sites. • A calmer map: pins are easier to see and tap, and pins that overlap open a list. • A new city picker. • Remodel a running café and pick each machine's level. • Board meetings: new exit offers and stronger reactions. • One clear card for each company on Listing. • Net worth pages list your cafés, projects and plots. • Your games are saved to iCloud. Settings has Sync now. • Fixes.

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Charts

Top Paid

The game has maintained its position at 47 recently.

Last updated on November 11, 2026.

Top Paid

The game has maintained its position at 54 recently.

Last updated on November 11, 2026.

Top Paid

📈 139+5

Games

This game rose +5 positions in Games chart.

Last updated on November 11, 2026.

User reviews

Phenomenal Upgrade to a classic game

Building upon ideas from games like Capitalism and Coffee Tycoon, Grounds Up manages to really entertain you as you grind your business opportunities into free market cash! A newly minted game that already has so much to enjoy with updates providing even more only a week in!

Great game super fun and addictive

Great game very fun. Only issue is that the icons for everything look strange. I would prefer a more minimalist design for those icons.

Strategic, lacks cosmetic love

The core gameplay is very smooth, you start off with nothing, and your task is to build a coffee empire as your business grows. When you begin, you are met with options, including how much money your business starts with, and how difficult the save will be. The higher the game difficulty is, the less customers are interested and the more rivals you have. What really stuck out to me is how strategic this game is–how the developer put so much thought into the stocks, the company itself, and trading. It stands out, it’s not just a simple “tapping game,” it’s not just a simple “coffee simulator,” because it’s not just that. You can back promising startups, scout and hire for managers to manage your store, all the way to being able to set up your own hotel company. The range of activities you can do in the game is truly mind blowing, words cannot describe how fascinated I am.

If you’re still reading this, you may be wondering, “If this game is so good, why did you only give it four stars?”


This leads me to the one complaint I have about this game: visual customization. When you first set up your business empire, or perhaps opening up subsidiary company companies, you are given a rather limited range of colors to select from and very few, basic logos. I recommend for the developer to focus more on visual customization to give companies more identity and make subsidiary companies feel more personal.

Overall, it’s essentially a brilliant game filled with strategic excitement, one that fans of business games could find themselves playing for hours. The game would easily qualify for five stars if it had more customization, detail, and more focus on brand identity.


PS: Pardon my English, I am French. My English is not good. Au revoir! :)
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AI Copy of Coffee Inc

Had bought after seeing on Reddit , but this seems like a blatant copy of coffee inc and every illustration looks ai generated. Please do yourself a favor and buy coffee inc 2 instead.

Response from developer

Thank you for trying Grounds Up and for taking the time to share your honest feedback. We truly appreciate it. We love classic tycoon games, and they inspired this one. Every screen in Grounds Up was designed by hand and refined by us over many weeks of iterations. We are sorry the look did not feel right to you, and we understand. We built the game to go beyond coffee, with hotels, property, startups, a bank and rival takeovers. If you are willing to tell us more about what you did not like, please write to groundsupsupport@gmail.com. We read every message, and your feedback helps us make the game better.

Inspiration from Coffee Inc but with his own style and vision

I like it, no ads, no in pay. Everything is good but I see LOTS of room for improvement. Can we see our weekly progress after we close it? Sometimes I close it by accident and I get a lump of cash and not sure what happened or what sold and have no way to see the report again. Would love music and sound. Many more feedback but overall it’s a fun addictive game if you’re into these type of games. Just to reiterate: NO ADS NO IN APP PURCHASES… it’s WORTH IT purchasing! Good game overall and looking forward to many more updates and features!
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Response from developer

Thank you so much for this kind review and for the ideas! Seeing the weekly report again after you close it is a great point, and it is now on our list. Music and sound are on our list too. Please keep the feedback coming at groundsupsupport@gmail.com.