Yope raises $12.3 million for private social networking app

Yope has raised $12.3 million in seed funding, giving the consumer-social startup more money to build an app centered on private groups of friends and family. For investors who follow public social-media companies, the deal points to a different bet on user engagement: smaller circles, messaging, photo sharing and paid features instead of ads and creator-driven feeds.

Northzone led the round, according to TechCrunch, with Inovo, Redseed and Geek Ventures also participating. Seed funding is early-stage capital used to help a young company develop its product, hire and find a repeatable business model. The new round brings Yope’s total funding to $20 million.

Yope is trying to position itself against platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram by focusing on what it calls “micro communities,” or private spaces for smaller groups. The app has private accounts by default, no public content feed and no advertising model. An algorithmic feed, in plain terms, is a stream of posts ranked by software based on what a platform thinks will keep a user watching or scrolling.

A social app built around private sharing

Bahram Ismailau, Yope’s London-based co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch the company’s thinking came from more than 100,000 interviews conducted with help from artificial intelligence tools. He said the company found that about 30% of young people used photo-dump or “spam” accounts, where they share more casual photos with a smaller group of real-life friends.

Ismailau told TechCrunch that many young people want a place to express themselves without needing to act like influencers, while others rely mostly on messaging rather than posting publicly. He described Yope as “an AI-native social platform for young people and the next generation.”

The company’s use of AI, short for artificial intelligence, is not aimed at generating posts, according to Ismailau. He told TechCrunch Yope wants to use AI to support interactions between users, including mini-games that friends can play together. That feature is expected to arrive in about a month, according to TechCrunch. Yope also plans to use AI for real-world meetups, including helping users find events, restaurants, bars or places to watch a football game.

Inside the app, users build profiles with photos that can become cut-out stickers. Photos appear on a user’s wall in a collage-style layout rather than in conventional albums. TechCrunch reported that Yope plans to add more customization, including interests, favorite music, mini-games, colors and wallpapers.

Usage metrics draw investor attention

Yope has nearly 15 million registered users, according to TechCrunch. Ismailau said users collectively share between 10 million and 20 million pieces of content each day, including photos, videos and stickers. He also said more than 50% of users open the app at least five days per week, and that about 20% of active users have invited an older family member.

Northzone partner Pär-Jörgen Pärson said in a statement that Yope gives users control over their social-media experience and contrasted it with Meta, TikTok and X. Northzone has also backed consumer companies including Spotify and Klarna, according to TechCrunch.

Yope plans to use the funding to keep developing the product, expand its roughly 35-person team and open a U.S. office. The app is available as a free download on iOS and Android.

This story draws on original reporting from TechCrunch.