London-based photo sharing social platform Yope has raised $12.3m (£9.2m) in a pre-Series A funding round to scale its platform.
Founded in 2021 by chief executive Bahram Ismailau and CTO Paul Rudkouski, Yope offers an ad-free, algorithm-free alternative to public social media platforms.
Designed around what the founders call “Friendspace,” the app allows users to share photos and videos privately within closed groups of close friends and family.
The platform uses generative AI agents to automatically compile shared content into curated recaps and private memory archives. To date, Yope claims to have attracted over 14 million users who have shared more than half a billion photos and videos.
“We believe the future of social is active participation, powered by AI,” said Ismailau.
“Our AI agents turn the moments close friends share into personalised, 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.”
Yope will use the fresh capital to double its team size and expand its engineering capacity.
The investment round was led by Northzone and also saw participation from Inovo, Redseed, and Geek Ventures, bringing the consumer tech startup’s total capital raised to $20m (£15m).
“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,” said Northzone partner Pär-Jörgen Pärson.
“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.”
