Wysa Rakes in $20M to Fuel Global Expansion of AI Mental Health Platform

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted or put a pause on mental health services in 93 percent of countries worldwide in 2020. Since then, society has been working to revolutionize the accessibility of mental health services. In America, this has been done on a federal level. Globally, these efforts often happen on a technological basis. Wysa, a Boston-based startup with global roots, is one player in the space.

Wysa operates an artificial intelligence-backed mental health service platform via a chatbot. Active in 65 countries and used by 4.5 million people, the anonymous platform raked in $20 million on Thursday led by HealthQuad with participation from British International Investment, Google Assistant Investments and others.

With its new capital, Wysa plans to further expand into the U.S., U.K., India and other global markets. The company also plans to expand its chatbot accessibility on WhatsApp by creating more multilingual functions.

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The Wysa platform caters to people experiencing mood swings, stress or anxiety. Through its chatbot, it offers suggestions and tools that users can incorporate into their everyday lives as they manage their mental health.

“Wysa has not only been extremely successful as a consumer well-being platform but has also developed into a clinically validated, powerful tool to proactively manage mental health and well-being,” Wysa co-founder Ramakant Vempati said in a statement. “Wysa meets people where they are, whether that means a little help with occasional workplace stress, right up to coping with debilitating pain, depression and anxiety. With this funding, we look forward to scaling up further and helping millions of more people.”

Wysa has received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation, which was awarded due to the startup’s ability to help adults who have chronic pain and associated depression and anxiety. 

“Wysa provides help across the care continuum,” Ajay Mahipal, the director at HealthQuad, said in a statement. “FDA Breakthrough Device Designation status, user privacy further validated by Mozilla and real-time AI-CBT support makes Wysa one of the few clinically validated, privacy-focused and personalized solutions built for global scale.”