Headspace Acquires AI Mental Health Startup Sayana

Headspace Acquires AI Mental Health Startup Sayana

What You Should Know:

Headspace Health, today announced the acquisition of Sayana, an AI-driven mental health and wellness company. With this acquisition, Headspace Health is expanding its ability to provide highly-personalized mental health care and content to its millions of users in 190+ countries. 

– The acquisition comes approx. 6 months after the $3B merger of Headspace and Ginger, and will add further AI capabilities to what is the most accessible and comprehensive digital mental health platform in the world.   

Sayana: Mental Self-Care for Everyone, Everywhere

Founded in 2018 and backed by Y Combinator in 2020, Sayana has supported users around the world to improve their mental wellness by helping its members become more mindful of the connections between their feelings and events. The Sayana Self-Care app leverages chat-based sessions with an AI persona named Sayana, who encourages users to track their mood along with what influences it. Sayana personalizes users’ experiences based on their check-ins and mood trends, surfacing high-quality content and self-care exercises rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance commitment therapy (ACT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), as well as breathing exercises. In addition, the Sayana Sleep app helps members to enjoy deep and restful sleep sessions sequenced based on their mood and sleep patterns.

Why It Matters

Both Ginger and Headspace have long used AI and natural language processing to personalize care and content delivered to their members.  

– Headspace uses AI to better match individuals with personalized content based on usage patterns and preferences.

– Ginger uses AI and natural language processing to better route members to the most appropriate level of care by analyzing coaching conversations, and flagging when members need immediate triage or emergency support. 

The addition of Sayana will add to the platform’s AI architecture and further personalize users’ experiences based on their check-ins and mood trends, surfacing high-quality content and self-care exercises rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance commitment therapy (ACT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), as well as breathing exercises.

Post-Acquisition Plans

As part of the acquisition, leadership from the Y-Combinator-backed company will immediately join the Headspace Health team, and the Sayana app experience will remain live to its 300,000+ users while Headspace Health integrates the technology into its platform over the next several quarters.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.