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When the founders of a mental health app for men called Mental saw that one feature \u2014 AI interactive audio \u2014 was resonating wildly with their users, they knew they were on to something.<\/p>\n
And so the idea for a new, and hopefully safer, kind of AI therapy app was born, which they called The Path<\/a>, co-founder and CEO\u00a0Anson Whitmer tells TechCrunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then famed author and motivational speaker Tony Robbins grew so enamored with this startup that he scooched in as a co-founder.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Path has now raised $14.3 million in seed funding led by Prime Movers Lab (where Robbins is a partner), with participation from speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, boxer Deontay Wilder, and Designer Fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n After Prime Movers invested, Robbins began chatting with Whitmer and co-founder Tyler Sheaffer on small stuff like branding, but as his enthusiasm and ideas for the app grew, they offered to bring him in as a co-founder.\u00a0The author has since helped shape The Path into a therapy-plus-coaching app that taps into Robbins\u2019 popular self-improvements methods.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whitmer, formerly an early employee at meditation app Calm alongside Sheaffer, says his pursuit of mental health tech was born out of tragic experiences: When he was 19, a beloved uncle committed suicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n That inspired Whitmer to get a PhD in psychology, and he planned to go into research after graduation. But while he was in college, a cousin left a voicemail. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize until it was too late. It was also a call for help, and he killed himself,\u201d Whitmer recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n That spurred a change of course toward work that could bring science\u2019s findings to the masses. Working at Calm was a natural first step, as the research on how meditation improves mental health is solid.\u00a0Still, after working at Calm until 2021, Whitmer felt he could do more.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEven though we did have a big impact, it\u2019s not really a big enough impact,\u201d he said. \u201cThe issue is, people\u2019s problems are just too idiosyncratic. They\u2019re too personal. They\u2019re unique.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Plus, everyone will never have access to individual therapy or coaching. There just aren\u2019t enough therapists in the world for that.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whitmer sees LLMs and AI as the bridge spanning that gap.\u00a0\u201cWhat\u2019s exciting and game-changing is that, for the first time in my career, I\u2019ve seen that there\u2019s actually this possibility for every single person to have the personalized sort of access and care that they need to really get the help,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, such a thing is already starting to happen. OpenAI has said that at least 900 million people use ChatGPT for mental health-related queries every week.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n However, the problem with using consumer chatbots for mental health is that they are \u201coptimized for engagement,\u201d Whitmer says, and that is the opposite of what therapy and coaching should do.\u00a0<\/p>\n Consumer chatbots try to solve problems quickly for users, and engage in \u201creinforcement\u201d of ideas, to keep users coming back for more.\u00a0\u201cBut therapy\/coaching doesn\u2019t work that way. You\u2019re trying to understand the problem deeply,\u201d he said. The idea is to dig out assumptions and then help the person discover their own solutions.<\/p>\n Whitmer says The Path\u2019s AI is trained \u201cto set up structure, so that later on, you can get to a place where there is resolution,\u201d but from a place of understanding.\u00a0<\/p>\n To that end, Whitmer says the startup\u2019s<\/a> specially trained AI model has scored a 95 on the mental health safety AI benchmark, Vera-MH.<\/a> This compares to a top score of 65 for the consumer bots.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s meant to challenge you. It\u2019s not just meant to agree with you,\u201d he says. In fact, he says the app\u2019s model is post-trained from open source models, so it doesn\u2019t use the major consumer LLMs at all, meaning it is not simply a wrapper over them.<\/p>\n The Path, which lets users choose from 11 virtual AI therapists and customize their preferences for directness and other details, is currently free as it gains users. Eventually, the startup plans to charge $40 a month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n