Veterans of the European startup scene, who’ve launched a number of shopper apps up to now, are partly popping out of stealth Tuesday with a brand new app. On the face of it, Grouphug will merely generate memes from the archive of a bunch WhatsApp chat. Nevertheless, that masks a wider play. 

Grouphug is led by Felix Petersen, some of the skilled and seasoned B2C founders in Europe, who constructed the Amen and Plazes apps. 

Proper now, all customers can do on Grouphug is export the textual content from a bunch WhatsApp chat and generate humorous photographs from the content material. 

Nevertheless, that is only a taster of issues to return. Underlying this easy train to accumulate beta customers is an app nonetheless in stealth mode. However Petersen hinted to TechCrunch that the corporate plans to launch a platform to generate extra worth out of WhatsApp teams utilizing generative AI. 

“We expect we’ve cracked AI humor. For now, Grouphug will create jokes based mostly on what occurred within the group. We flip your WhatsApp chats into memes. However then now we have different plans for it,” he informed TechCrunch. “There’s this world of group chats the place a lot of the issues taking place, like on Reddit or X, are carried out in public. However every little thing that’s in WhatsApp teams just isn’t a part of the general public web. That’s a chance.”

The startup has already raised a €1.5 million ($1.7 million) pre-seed spherical led by Berlin-based Blueyard VC, alongside Tiny VC, Charles Songhurst (a Meta board member), Atlantic Labs, and others.

Petersen is joined by Joseph Djenandji, who just lately exited his well-known multi-channel journey model LostIn. The third founder is Matthew Balazsi, who has labored on AI and ML for the final 10 years.