The Yope Times
By the numbers
- 14M+ users across 182 countries
- 500M+ photos & videos shared
- 35M+ AI recaps watched
- #1 Lifestyle app in 12 countries
Core features
- Private groups
- shared only with close friends — no public feed.
- Lock-screen delivery
- snaps land straight on friends' lock screens.
- AI Recaps
- AI turns shared moments into personalized memory recaps.
- Streaks & levels
- gamified closeness with your friends.
- Custom profiles
- vibes, wallpapers, music, face pick.
Backed by
Northzone, Goodwater Capital, Inovo VC, Redseed, Geek Ventures
Angels. Among our angel investors are founders who have successfully exited to Snap, Google & AppLovin, as well as many seasoned consumer founders with extensive experience. Among them: Jean de La Rochebrochard · Greg Tkachenko · Dima Shvets · Anton Borzov.
Prior investors from BeReal and Zenly.
The founders
Bahram Ismailau, CEO — co-founded Yope in 2021; previously founded GetClean and Peech.
Paul Rudkouski, CTO — previously iOS engineer at Kibo and Rakuten Viber (1B+ users).
About
Founded February 4, 2021. Incorporated as Salo App, Inc. Headquartered in Middletown, Delaware, with the core team in London and Lisbon.
Press contact: press@yope.app
Yope, the AI-Native Social Platform for Micro Communities, Raises $12.3M Pre-Series A Led by Northzone
With more than 14 million users sharing privately with their close friends and family, Yope is building a new kind of AI-native social experience around real life.
Yope, an AI-native private social platform for micro communities where close friends share real life, has raised $12.3 million led by Northzone — an early backer of Spotify, Klarna and Trustpilot — with participation from Inovo, Redseed and Geek Ventures. The round brings total funding to $20 million.
The raise comes as social media is splitting in two: public platforms have become places to perform and consume, while real life has moved into smaller, private circles. Even among U.S. adults on TikTok, the top 25% produce 98% of all public videos, according to the Pew Research Center.
But private sharing is still fragmented, with the moments that matter most scattered across chats, camera rolls and legacy social apps. Among the 10,000+ U.S. users Yope interviewed, one in three said they want to leave Snapchat but stay because their memories live there.
Yope is building for this shift: a private social platform where close friends and families share real life and keep their memories together. On Yope, people stay in control — they share moments only with the people they choose, and choose who can reach them.
More than 14 million people have joined Yope organically and shared over half a billion photos and videos. Yope primarily serves the Gen Z market, with the leading age category of users between 16 and 19. Yope rewards users for sharing, leveraging AI to turn what they share into personalized recaps.
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.Bahram Ismailau · co-founder & CEO of Yope
Founded in 2021, Yope is an AI-native company, with growth, product, design, moderation and operations increasingly running on internal multi-agent systems. AI also runs through the user experience of the product, turning shared moments into curated recaps.
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.Paul Rudkouski · co-founder & CTO of Yope
Yope's ambition is to create a new category it calls Friendspace: a private space built around the people who matter most, where sharing real life becomes something you take part in. The new funding will help Yope double its team and accelerate product development.
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.Pär-Jörgen Pärson · Partner at Northzone
About Yope
Yope is an AI-native social platform for micro communities. It is a private place to share your real life with the people you actually know, and AI turns the moments you share into recaps and keeps them as a private archive of your life together. Yope operates across the US, the UK and Europe. Learn more at yope.app.
About Northzone
Northzone is a global venture capital fund that has invested in more than 175 companies, including category-defining businesses such as Spotify, Klarna, Personio and Trustpilot. Northzone has raised more than ten funds to date, with its most recent fund in excess of $1.2bn. The firm invests from seed to growth stage, with offices in London, New York, Amsterdam, Berlin and Stockholm.