More than one billion professionals spend most of their workday in email: an interface that hasn't changed in 25 years. Scape, founded by two 23-year-old Swedes, today emerges from stealth and launches an intelligent email inbox. Scape has raised $3.2 million from Y Combinator, General Catalyst, and FundersClub.
Angel investors include:
- Max Junestrand (co-founder of Legora),
- Sebastian Knutsson (co-founder of King),
- Jacob Wallenberg jr. (Ramp and EQT),
- Sophia Bendz (previously CMO, Spotify),
- and operators from OpenAI, Google, Meta and Ramp.
Using Gmail can make email feel more like work about work, than actual work. Simply answering an email from a client can mean reading through old threads to find context, checking meeting notes for what was agreed, filling out attached forms in a separate tool, uploading them, writing the email and sending it, and then watching for their reply among all other ongoing threads.
Deciding how to respond is only a fraction of that time. With Scape, this can all be done in a single click.
Scape was founded by Melvin Hagberg while participating in Y Combinator's summer batch in 2024 as a 21-year-old solo founder.
While the company originally started as a customer support tool for email, Melvin pivoted it into Scape after realising the email support tool he had built could help solve his own frustration with email. Elis Hodzic, 23, joined as a co-founder in 2025 after originally backing the company as an investor.
On the surface, the product looks familiar to a traditional email inbox, but is designed to prepare work proactively. When opening a thread, Scape has already drafted responses that are ready to review and send. The drafts can even include attachments that Scape has created or edited. It can do so because it learns continuously from the entire email inbox and meetings via its built-in, local meeting notetaker.
At the core of Scape is the inbox view, which surfaces only the emails that require attention. It’s organised around custom labels such as Customers and Hiring, to enable prioritisation accordingly. Lower-priority emails like notifications and newsletters are hidden by default.
“Our bet is simple: email is where most professionals get their work done. They don’t need another chatbot or Gmail plugin; they need an interface purpose-built for work that happens in email,” said Melvin Hagberg.
“Our mission is to enable these professionals to do more impactful work, and to make email fun and fast to use.”
Early investor Gustaf Alströmer, General Partner at Y Combinator, said:
“It’s painfully obvious that AI will transform email. While I’ve seen hundreds of startups try to innovate in the space over the years, I’ve seen nothing like the team behind Scape. Once people start using the product, they just don't go back to Gmail.”
Today, the team is five people based in Stockholm. Next, the company is planning to grow the team with additional roles across engineering and product.
Scape is now available for early access at scape.app.
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