Porto-based Sword Well being, a HealthTech AI Care firm, immediately introduced a €34.6 million funding spherical at a €3.4 billion valuation to speed up their M&A momentum, international growth, and the event of foundational AI fashions.
The spherical was led by Normal Catalyst and included participation from Khosla Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Lince Capital, Oxy Capital, Armilar, Indico Capital, and Shilling.
“We’ve rebuilt care supply from the bottom up – changing a century-old, labor-intensive mannequin with AI that removes obstacles to world-class care for everybody who wants it,” stated Virgilio Bento, Founder & CEO of Sword Well being. “Treating greater than half one million folks and saving purchasers almost a billion {dollars} in pointless healthcare prices has confirmed that Sword’s pioneering AI Care Mannequin is the way forward for healthcare.
“This funding is a milestone that permits us to deepen our foundational AI analysis and to speed up our growth into new healthcare verticals like psychological well being – a subject nonetheless dominated by unscalable and ineffective fashions – bringing really life-changing care to thousands and thousands who wrestle with psychological well being all over the world, the identical method we did it for thousands and thousands with bodily ache.”
Based in 2015, Sword Well being appears to be like to shift healthcare from human-first to AI-first by means of its AI care platform, making world-class healthcare accessible anytime, wherever, whereas considerably decreasing prices for payers, self-insured employers, nationwide well being methods, and different healthcare organisations.
Sword started by specializing in bodily ache care with AI at its core, and has since expanded into pelvic well being, motion well being, and now psychological well being. Since 2020, greater than 500,000 members throughout three continents have accomplished 6.5 million AI classes, reportedly serving to Sword’s 1,000+ enterprise purchasers keep away from almost €865 million in pointless healthcare prices.
Backed by 40 scientific research and over 40 patents, Sword Well being has raised greater than €259 million from buyers, together with Khosla Ventures, Normal Catalyst, Transformation Capital and Founders Fund.
“At Normal Catalyst, we again corporations driving significant change in healthcare, and we consider Sword Well being sits squarely on the forefront of that transformation,” stated Chris Bischoff, Managing Director at Normal Catalyst and Sword board director. “By fusing refined AI with human scientific experience, Sword is re-imagining the whole care continuum – from bodily ache care to immediately’s launch of Thoughts for psychological well being – increasing entry, enhancing outcomes, and decreasing prices at a world scale. We’re proud to help Sword because it accelerates the shift towards really AI-first healthcare.”
Together with the funding announcement, the corporate additionally unveiled Thoughts, a psychological well being answer that mixes AI and licensed clinicians to ship steady, personalised care, seeking to remodeling psychological well being from episodic discuss remedy to a proactive, always-on help system.
With the launch of Thoughts, Sword is increasing its AI Care mannequin to deal with one in every of healthcare’s greatest challenges: entry to efficient and high-quality psychological well being care.
In line with knowledge supplied by Sword, almost 1 billion folks worldwide stay with a psychological well being situation. But care stays fragmented, reactive, and inaccessible. Within the U.S. alone, greater than 60 million adults skilled psychological sickness final 12 months, however most by no means obtained significant care. Regardless of broad availability of psychological well being options, entry stays difficult, utilisation stays low, and outcomes aren’t enhancing.
Sword believes that conventional remedy, based mostly on episodic 40-minute classes usually weeks aside, can’t sustain with the round the clock actuality of psychological well being, and displays a largely outdated, superficial and one-dimensional view. It captures solely fragments of an individual’s life, lacking the on a regular basis components that form psychological wellbeing: sleep, stress, relationships, atmosphere.
Thoughts appears to be like to deal with this with a proactive, 24/7 mannequin that integrates cutting-edge AI with licensed, Ph.D-level psychological well being specialists.
Three improvements energy Thoughts:
- Phoenix: A personalised AI Care agent particularly designed to handle psychological well being situations in a complete, tailor-made, and holistic method.
- M-band: A proprietary wearable machine that captures the affected person’s full environmental and physiological context, detecting early indicators of melancholy and anxiousness to allow proactive outreach by Thoughts clinicians.
- Thoughts clinicians: Ph.D.-level psychological well being professionals work in live performance with Phoenix to repeatedly have interaction with sufferers each day, making certain the human contact stays central to care.
