Headspace Health has acquired sayana, an AI-powered mental health and wellness company, for an undisclosed amount. Headspace Health says the acquisition of the San Francisco-based company will expand its ability to provide personalized care to its users. Acquisition occurs as Headspace and Ginger merged last year to form Headspace Health, which is valued at $ 3 billion. The merger brought together Ginger’s therapy and training offerings with Headspace’s meditation and mindfulness services.
Founded in 2018 and supported by Y Combinator in 2020, Sayana leverages chat-based sessions with an AI personality that encourages users to track their moods. The app personalizes user experiences based on their mood trends and suggests breathing exercises and self-care. The company’s sleep app helps users have restful sleep sessions based on their mood and sleep patterns.
Headspace Health CEO Russel Glass told TechCrunch in an interview that Sayana’s apps will continue to work for a period of time as Headspace Health integrates its core capabilities into the Headspace and Ginger expertise. Once the integration is complete, the company will deactivate Sayana as a separate experience and move users to Headspace Health.
“Sayana created a unique member-driven experience and, as we think ahead to what we are trying to do, it fits elegantly into Headspace Health’s vision of a world where you can support full continuum of care, no matter where. someone is on the mental health continuum, ”Glass said. “One of the things we’ve seen during the pandemic is how many people continue to need support, so we need to stay focused on innovation. We have to make sure we can automate parts of the mental health continuum and deliver personalized self-care content to people who need it, and that’s where this acquisition is so exciting. “
Headspace Health is focused on creating an integrated experience to offer mental health help that ranges from prevention to clinical care, all from a platform backed by artificial intelligence and data science. With the addition of Sayana, Headspace Health plans to enhance its ability to personalize experiences by offering help and services based on user records.
Image credits: Headspace Health
Glass stated that Headspace and Ginger are already leveraging AI to support their team of behavioral health coaches, therapists, and psychiatrists to ensure quality interactions with users, comprehensive service tracking, and close collaboration among care providers. He highlighted that adding Sayana’s ability to understand a user’s needs in a fully automated way through a robust chatbot experience will remove stigma from experiences and offer more personalized and effective care.
As part of the acquisition, Sayana founder and CEO Sergey Fayfer joins Headspace Health and takes on a product leadership role within the company.
“Since our inception, we have had a mission in Sayana to put accessible self-care in everyone’s pocket,” Fayfer said in a statement. “We are delighted to bring together our expertise in technology, engineering and design to help advance Headspace Health’s efforts to democratize high-quality, affordable mental health care around the world.”
In terms of the future, Glass says Headspace Health plans to continue expanding to meet the growing needs for mental health care. The company’s goal is to be the most accessible and comprehensive platform by reducing the cost of care as much as possible. He noted that Headspace Health will continue to innovate to ensure that it can lower the cost of care while keeping the quality of care as high as possible. Glass noted that this will require Headspace Health to be aggressive in terms of how it thinks about both inorganic growth strategies and organic growth strategies.
“We will continue to focus on the employer landscape. You will see us continue to announce new health plans and provider associations, there will be a number of them in the coming months, ”said Glass. “We will continue to focus on youth as an area of expansion for us. You will continue to see us innovate. We are spending a lot on research and development and will continue to be acquisitive as we see opportunities to add platforms like Sayana to our platform over time. “
