Worker-focused psychological well being firm Journey is buying Felt, a startup previously often called Mine’d that makes a speciality of matching people with therapists utilizing synthetic intelligence. The monetary phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed. Journey, which presents a psychological well being worker help program utilized by firms like Walgreens and Common Music Group, says the acquisition aligns with its mission to revolutionize worker well-being and psychological well being help whereas leveraging the ability of AI.
Felt co-founder and CEO Aaron Albert instructed TechCrunch that the startup’s acquisition is a pure development of its imaginative and prescient because it amplifies the corporate’s skill to make emotional wellness help not simply accessible, but in addition personalised.
“Joining forces with Journey enables us to leverage our AI-driven matching innovations on a larger scale, reaching more individuals through their extensive network,” Albert mentioned. “It aligns perfectly with our foundational goal of easing access to effective mental health support and revolutionizing the way people connect with compatible therapists.”
Felt’s expertise leverages pure language processing and machine studying to investigate the components that result in a very good paring between a person and a therapist. The expertise considers components corresponding to communication kinds, persona traits and shared values and extra to foretell compatibility. Whereas Felt’s expertise was initially designed for a consumer-facing app, it is going to be built-in into Journey’s backend product.
Journey CEO and founder Stephen Sokoler instructed TechCrunch that Felt’s expertise will likely be built-in into the corporate’s Proactive EAP platform. The corporate plans to pair Felt’s AI-based expertise with its current human-enabled therapist pairings with a purpose to higher match staff with therapists. Workers who’re a part of Journey’s platform are offered entry to Masters-Degree Clinicians, who after understanding the wants of the worker, will mix their experience with Felt’s expertise to seek out the proper match.
The acquisition comes somewhat over two years after Felt raised $3.5 million in a seed funding spherical led by Hear Enterprise.
Journey has raised $6 million in funding to this point in a number of rounds previous to the pandemic, led by Canaan Companions, Courtside Ventures, Betaworks, BDMI, HealthTech Capital and others. The corporate says it has grown 800% since then and doesn’t must or plan to lift extra capital.
