Two college kids raise $5.1 million seed round to build AI-powered social network iMessage

Series, a social media app, announced it has raised a $5.1 million pre-funding round, with investors including Venmo co-founder Ikram Majdon Ismail, Pear VC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and GPTZero founder Edward Tian. The company was founded early last year by Yale students Nathanio Johnson and Sean Hargro, both of whom are still seniors at the university.

The chain bills itself as a next-generation social networking platform, not an AI application, and hails itself as one of the first companies to run entirely on iMessage, Johnson, the CEO, told TechCrunch.

Users send a text message to a Series AI phone number on iMessage, explaining who they are and who they want to contact. From there, the Series AI sends messages to the user, presenting so-called “shares” — or a circle of 10 images that one can easily scroll through — of posts from other people who are also using Share AI and looking to connect for a similar reason. Each carousel includes a photo of the person and their request, and users can tap and hold the carousel to start a private conversation with another user in the Series AI chat, without sharing their personal number.

Johnson, who studies computer science and economics, is a founder during a unique period in technology history, marked by rapid advances in artificial intelligence and more investor money than ever before. He’s part of the next generation of young founders whose businesses and mindsets have been AI-first from the start, something investors say gives young founders a head start over existing founders and older founders trying to focus and catch up.

He sees the industry going through a massive technological shift from user interfaces to conversational interfaces, like Google Search to ChatGPT, “where you’re used to scrolling through libraries and clicking through websites versus speaking with AI or whatever to quickly determine what you’re looking for.”

Johnson and Hargro met while working on a podcast in their first year at the Yale Entrepreneurship Society. They used to interview founders and CEOs to get insights into building a successful business, and through those conversations they “realized the power of warm connections,” Johnson said.

“We then set out in our new summer to start a business independent of the club and build a company around the same thesis, using AI as a facilitator of warm communication,” Johnson said. He and Hargro, who studied neuroscience at Yale, have gone through multiple iterations of what is now known as the series. When they came up with a concept they liked, about a year after their prototype, they started fundraising for it in March 2025, building a team of eight in the process.

Johnson and his team decided to create a viral video on LinkedIn about the launch of the series. “We came up with the idea for the trailer at 1am the night before, stayed up all night shooting the video and posted it at 3pm the same day,” Johnson said. Two days later, they met the first investor.

The platform recently opened beyond the college student base but still aims to target Gen Z and professionals. Johnson said most people use it for business reasons, although they’ve seen others use it for dating or to find friends. “Students use the series on more than 750 campuses,” he said. “82% of active users retain the thread through day 30, which is higher than Facebook’s early benchmark.”

Another company in this space is Boardy AI, which also uses AI to boost network introductions.

The chain’s new capital will be used to hire more engineers and expand product capabilities. After graduation, the company will remain on the East Coast, already operating out of an office in Chelsea, New York (they make the two-hour commute from New Haven, Connecticut, where Yale is located, to New York frequently, Johnson said).

“We’ve built an initial chain network between Ivy League and, more prominently, schools on the East Coast. We also have a strong belief in Silicon Alley,” Johnson said of the decision to stay east, which aligns with a trend of young consumer founders choosing New York over Silicon Valley.

It is worth noting that he and Hargro did not drop out of college. Johnson said a good day is one where everything is running smoothly, but a bad day could be one where he has a bunch of tests and essays to write while balancing managing the team. He said he did not drop out because he felt he had time to study and run the company. And it seems he was right.

“The extra time you spend outside of your supposed commitment can be used to achieve what you really want to do,” he said. “People are often too afraid to take advantage of their extra time.”