Yope, an AI-native private social platform for micro communities, has raised £9.2 million in a Pre-Series A round led by Northzone, with participation from Inovo, Redseed and Geek Ventures. The round brings total funding to £15 million, and the new capital will help double the team and accelerate product development.
Social media is splitting in two, with public platforms becoming places to perform and consume while real life moves into smaller, private circles. Private sharing itself remains fragmented, and the moments that matter most end up scattered across chats, camera rolls and legacy social apps. Built for that shift, the platform gives close friends and families a private space to share real life and keep their memories together. People stay in control, sharing moments only with those they choose and deciding who can reach them, while AI turns what they share into personalised recaps and rewards them for sharing.
Among U.S. adults on TikTok, the top 25% produce 98% of all public videos, according to the Pew Research Center. Of the 10,000+ U.S. users interviewed by Yope, one in three said they want to leave Snapchat but stay because their memories live there.
Founded in 2021, Yope has been joined organically by more than 14 million people, who have shared over half a billion photos and videos. Gen Z is the primary market, with the leading age category of users between 16 and 19. Growth, product, design, moderation and operations increasingly run on internal multi-agent systems, and AI also runs through the user experience of the product, turning shared moments into curated recaps. The stated ambition is to create a new category called Friendspace: a private space built around the people who matter most, where sharing real life becomes something you take part in.
We believe the future of social is active participation, powered by AI. Our AI agents turn the moments close friends share into personalized, gamified experiences. The same way Roblox and Minecraft became social worlds for hundreds of millions of young people, we can make real-life communication feel playful, alive and deeply personal. This is already in active development, and we expect to bring the first version to users over the next few months.
Social media stopped being social. It turned into media built to hold your attention and sell it - and made this the loneliest generation yet. Young people don't need a bigger audience; they need a private place for the friends who actually matter. Our mission is to help them build healthier social lives, rooted in real friendships rather than performance.
Yope is a fresh, empowering and safe take on social media, where the users are in full control of their experience - in contrast to the predatory practices of Meta, TikTok or X. We are very excited to partner with Bahram, Paul and their team to build the service far beyond the current millions of users and half a billion moments shared.
