Yale-founded Series raises $5.1 million to expand campus social app

Series, the Yale-founded social app built inside iMessage, has raised $5.1 million in fresh pre-seed funding as investors back a simple but ambitious idea: make introductions feel more like a trusted referral than a cold message. The company is positioning itself as a next-generation social networking platform, not just another AI app, and its pitch rests on a problem that existing social products still solve badly, finding the right person to meet without exposing a phone number or forcing users into awkward outreach.

The product works through text. Users message a Series AI number in iMessage, say who they are and who they want to connect with, and the system returns what the company calls shares, a carousel of 10 images of other users with similar interests or asks. From there, a user can press and hold to start a private conversation without revealing a personal number. Series says the model uses AI Friends to create warm, double-opt-in introductions across networks, a workflow designed to feel closer to an introduction from a mutual contact than a swipe-based social feed.

That framing helps explain why Silicon Valley names have piled in. The new round included Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Pear VC, Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman and GPTZero founder Edward Tian. Earlier investors in Series included Parable, DGB.VC, Radicle Impact, Uncommon Projects, 47th Street and angels such as Huffman and Tian. The company had already raised $3.1 million in a pre-seed round in 2025, reportedly closing that financing in 14 days, a sign of how quickly the concept has resonated with investors looking for the next consumer AI breakout.

Series was founded early last year by Yale students Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow. Johnson is studying computer science and economics, while Hargrow studied neuroscience at Yale. The two met while working on a podcast during their freshman year at the Yale Entrepreneurial Society, then built the startup around a thesis that AI could make warm connections scalable. They began fundraising in March 2025 and grew the team to eight while refining the product through multiple iterations.

The bigger question is whether that campus buzz can become a durable network beyond Yale and a few other schools. Series has an obvious advantage in the Apple ecosystem, where iMessage lowers friction and keeps the experience inside a habit users already have. It also carries a structural risk: a product built around Apple messaging may be easy to adopt on campus, but harder to broaden if the network effect stalls outside iPhone-heavy circles. For investors, the bet is that conversational interfaces, not traditional app screens, will define the next consumer layer. Series is now trying to prove that the first social network native to text can grow from novelty into habit.