The Path raises $14.3M to build safer AI therapy

The Path, a mental health startup co-founded by Tony Robbins, Anson Whitmer, and Tyler Sheaffer, has raised $14.3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, a venture capital firm where Robbins is a partner. Other investors in the round include speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, boxer Deontay Wilder, and Designer Fund. Whitmer, who serves as CEO, and Sheaffer previously worked at the meditation app Calm, which they left in 2021.

Whitmer’s transition to mental health technology was driven by personal tragedy. When he was 19, a beloved uncle committed suicide. Later, while Whitmer was in college, a cousin left a voicemail that was also a call for help, and he killed himself. These events led him to pursue a PhD in psychology and eventually transition from academic research to consumer technology. After leaving Calm, Whitmer concluded that while the meditation app had a significant impact, individual mental health struggles are too idiosyncratic and personal for general tools.

To address this, The Path is developing an AI-driven therapy-plus-coaching platform. Whitmer argues that general consumer chatbots are optimized for engagement, which can lead them to reinforce a user’s ideas just to keep them active. In contrast, therapy requires deeply understanding a problem and challenging assumptions. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT has at least 900 million weekly users for mental health-related queries. To provide a safer alternative, The Path focuses on deep problem understanding rather than engagement optimization. On the Vera-MH benchmark, a mental health safety AI benchmark, The Path’s model scored 95, while general consumer bots scored 65. As Whitmer notes, “It’s meant to challenge you. It’s not just meant to agree with you.”

The platform currently offers 11 virtual AI therapists, allowing users to customize preferences such as directness. While the service is currently free as it builds its user base, the startup plans to charge a $40 monthly subscription fee in the future.

Why it matters

The Path represents a shift from general-purpose AI chatbots toward specialized, safety-benchmarked models for mental health, attempting to solve the “engagement optimization” problem inherent in consumer LLMs.