A new mental health startup, The Path, has secured $14.3 million in seed funding to develop a specialized AI-driven therapy and coaching platform. The funding round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with additional support from investors including Apolo Anton Ohno, Deontay Wilder, and Designer Fund. The venture, which counts renowned motivational speaker Tony Robbins as a co-founder, aims to bridge the gap in mental health accessibility through advanced artificial intelligence.

Founded by Anson Whitmer and Tyler Sheaffer, both former employees of the meditation app Calm, The Path is designed to provide the kind of personalized care that traditional therapy often struggles to scale. Unlike mainstream consumer chatbots that are frequently optimized for high engagement and quick problem-solving, The Path utilizes a specialized AI model built to facilitate deep understanding and personal resolution. The company’s technology has already demonstrated superior safety standards, achieving a score of 95 on the Vera-MH mental health safety benchmark, significantly higher than the scores typically seen in general-purpose AI models.

The mission is driven by a desire to bring scientific mental health findings to a global audience. CEO Anson Whitmer, who holds a PhD in psychology, developed the concept following personal experiences with loss, aiming to create a tool that can offer structured support when professional human intervention is unavailable. Rather than simply acting as a wrapper for existing consumer large language models, The Path uses models post-trained from open-source foundations to ensure a more rigorous and challenging therapeutic experience.

Users of The Path can currently choose from 11 different virtual AI therapists, with the ability to customize preferences such as the level of directness. While the platform is currently offering its services for free to expand its user base, the company plans to implement a subscription model at $40 per month in the future.