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Who Owns Youper, and Who Founded It? The Company Behind the App That's Closing

Who is the company and founder behind Youper?

Last checked 2026-10-07: Youper's own website now says the service was discontinued on September 30, 2026, so the dated statements below describe how things stood before it closed. As of September 8, 2026, Youper, Inc. is a privately held San Francisco company founded in 2016 by psychiatrist Dr. Jose Hamilton Vargas along with co-founders Diego Dotta Couto and Thiago Marafon. As of that date, the company is winding down, and the app closes permanently on September 30, 2026. Here is what the public record actually shows about the company, its founders, and its funding — sourced, dated, and with the gaps in that record named rather than filled in.

As of September 8, 2026, Youper, Inc. is a privately held company based in San Francisco, founded in 2016 by psychiatrist Dr. Jose Hamilton Vargas together with co-founders Diego Dotta Couto and Thiago Marafon. As of that date it had not been acquired, and the company itself is not the thing that is disappearing — the consumer app is. Youper's own site states plainly, as of that date, that the business is winding down and the app closes permanently on September 30, 2026, with every account, chat history, and piece of personal data deleted starting the next day. That distinction — a company winding down versus an app being sunset by a company that continues — matters for anyone trying to understand what's actually ending. This page covers what the public record shows about the company, the people who built it, and its funding, separately from a product review of the app itself. IX Coach, a separately built AI coaching product, is one of several tools that occupy adjacent ground: it is designed to carry what a person has said forward across sessions rather than resetting into a fresh structured check-in each time — a design choice, stated as a fact about its own architecture, not a claim about which approach is better for a given person. The practices behind that design are published and browsable without an account at ixcoach.com/practices, for anyone who wants to check what the description above actually refers to.

Everything below is limited to what a named source actually says, with a link and the date it was checked. Where sources disagree or the record is thin — and on a few points, including Youper's total lifetime funding, they do — that disagreement is stated rather than resolved by picking the more flattering or more precise-sounding number.

The company: Youper, Inc.

As of September 8, 2026, Youper, Inc. is registered and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Tracxn's company profile lists 2016 as the founding year, describes the company as privately held, and names no acquirer. CB Insights' company profile independently confirms the 2016 founding year and lists Youper's status, as of September 8, 2026, as active ("Seed VC | Alive"), with no acquisition or parent company noted there either. As of that date, Youper's own site lists its address in San Francisco (94104).

Tracxn's company profile, checked in this session, lists the company's staff at 3 employees, per the profile's own data-as-of stamp of June 30, 2026.

Funding: a sourced $3 million round, and a public record that doesn't fully agree on the total

The clearest, most independently corroborated funding event on the record is a $3 million seed round announced in June 2019, led by Goodwater Capital. TechCrunch's own reporting on the round quotes co-founder Dr. Jose Hamilton Vargas directly: "On average, it takes 10 years for someone to finally talk to a health provider. This could become 10 minutes with an app like Youper." CB Insights' funding summary independently lists the same $3 million Goodwater round and adds one earlier, undisclosed-amount seed round from November 2018 — putting its tracked total at $3.53 million across two rounds.

Beyond that point, aggregators disagree and the disagreement is being reported rather than resolved: Tracxn's company profile lists total funding of $5.18 million across three rounds, a larger figure than CB Insights' $3.53 million across two, and the two services don't reconcile round-by-round in what's publicly visible. Because no primary source (a company statement, an SEC filing, or a press release) settles the total, the honest position is that Youper raised at least the $3 million Goodwater round confirmed by direct press reporting, and that total lifetime funding beyond that is reported inconsistently across the secondary sources that track it.

The founder: Dr. Jose Hamilton Vargas

As of September 8, 2026, Jose Hamilton Vargas is Youper's co-founder and CEO. His LinkedIn profile, viewed directly in this session, lists an M.D. from Universidade de Brasília and a psychiatry residency at Hospital de Base do Distrito Federal, alongside prior roles as CEO of Health Bank (Banco de Saúde) and as a practicing psychiatrist at Liva Saúde before founding Youper. The same profile lists an ongoing mentor role at Stanford's Health++ program, dating from November 2018.

In a 2018 interview with ODBMS.org, Vargas described himself as having roughly 12 years of clinical experience at that point and stated he is a member of the American Psychiatric Association and the author of two books; those are his own words about his own background, reported here as a dated, attributed statement rather than as independently audited fact. In that same interview, Vargas said the decision to rebuild the product around a more personal, conversational "assistant" format — rather than a set of standalone therapeutic exercises — came directly from user interviews in which people said they wanted something closer to a confidant than a tool, and that engagement more than tripled after that redesign.

The co-founders: Diego Dotta Couto and Thiago Marafon

Diego Dotta Couto co-founded Youper. TechCrunch's 2019 reporting on the company states his title directly, as "the startup's chief product and growth officer"; Youper's organizational profile on TheOrg, as of September 8, 2026, lists him as "Co-founder & Chief Product Officer." That same TheOrg profile describes his prior work as a UX Leader at TOTVS and as a UI designer and front-end developer at Ilog Tecnologia, both in Brazil, before he joined Youper's founding team.

Thiago Marafon co-founded Youper as Chief Technology Officer. Per his own account, given on the Mission.org "IT Visionaries" podcast, he built his first chatbot company in Brazil before Youper existed, and that work is what brought him to Vargas's founding team.

The shutdown: what Youper has said, and what it hasn't

As of September 8, 2026, Youper's own site states the app closes permanently on September 30, 2026: subscriptions are already disabled, no further charges will occur, and users can export their data (through Settings → Request My Data, or at start.youper.ai/export-data) up to that date. Starting October 1, 2026, the company states all accounts, chat histories, and personal data are permanently deleted from its servers and backups.

What the public record does not include, as of September 8, 2026, is a company statement naming a specific reason the app is closing. No press release, blog post, or founder interview located in this research states a cause. That gap is reported here as a gap, not filled with a guess — readers looking for "why did Youper shut down" will not find a sourced answer to that question on the public record checked in this session, and none is offered.

Is Youper, Inc. still a real company?

Yes, as of September 8, 2026. Youper, Inc. has not been reported as dissolved, and its own site is the source announcing the wind-down and the app's September 30, 2026 closure date — a company can be winding down its consumer product while the corporate entity itself still exists to manage that process, including the data-deletion timeline it has published.

Was Youper acquired by another company?

No public record located in this research shows an acquisition. Tracxn describes Youper as an independent, privately held company with no acquirer named. CB Insights separately confirms Youper's 2016 founding year and lists its status as active, with no acquirer or parent company noted there either.

How much money did Youper raise in total?

The one figure independently confirmed by direct press reporting is $3 million, raised in a June 2019 seed round led by Goodwater Capital. Beyond that, company-data aggregators disagree on the lifetime total — figures of $3.53 million and $5.18 million both appear in sources checked for this page — and no primary source settles which is correct, so no single total figure is asserted here.

If What You Need Right Now Is Crisis Support

Nothing on this page is a substitute for care from a licensed professional, and that includes IX Coach. Someone reading a page about a company's funding rounds and founders' backgrounds may be here for a more urgent reason — because a support tool they actually used is about to disappear — and that is worth addressing directly rather than assuming it belongs on a different page. As of September 8, 2026, Youper's own site states, while the company still operates, that it "is not an emergency service and cannot provide crisis intervention" and that Youper "does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment," and it names three places to go instead of the app, for a mental health emergency or for thoughts of suicide or self-harm: the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, by call or text at 988; the Crisis Text Line, by texting HOME to 741741; and Emergency Services on 911. Each of those three is free to reach, and any of them is a better call than an app that is closing.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the company and founder behind Youper?

Last checked 2026-10-07: Youper's own website now says the service was discontinued on September 30, 2026, so the dated statements below describe how things stood before it closed. As of September 8, 2026, Youper, Inc. is a privately held San Francisco company founded in 2016 by psychiatrist Dr. Jose Hamilton Vargas along with co-founders Diego Dotta Couto and Thiago Marafon. As of that date, the company is winding down, and the app closes permanently on September 30, 2026. Here is what the public record actually shows about the company, its founders, and its funding — sourced, dated, and with the gaps in that record named rather than filled in.

Is Youper, Inc. still a real company?

Yes, as of September 8, 2026. Youper, Inc. has not been reported as dissolved, and its own site is the source announcing the wind-down and the app's September 30, 2026 closure date — a company can be winding down its consumer product while the corporate entity itself still exists to manage that process, including the data-deletion timeline it has published.

Was Youper acquired by another company?

No public record located in this research shows an acquisition. Tracxn describes Youper as an independent, privately held company with no acquirer named. CB Insights separately confirms Youper's 2016 founding year and lists its status as active, with no acquirer or parent company noted there either.

How much money did Youper raise in total?

The one figure independently confirmed by direct press reporting is $3 million, raised in a June 2019 seed round led by Goodwater Capital. Beyond that, company-data aggregators disagree on the lifetime total — figures of $3.53 million and $5.18 million both appear in sources checked for this page — and no primary source settles which is correct, so no single total figure is asserted here.

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