Circles, a virtual mental health support app, has raised $8 million in a Seed funding round to expand its emotional support platform.
NFX and Flint Capital led the round with Sir Ronald Cohen, Jeff Swartz, and others.
With this new funding, Circles plans to expand its services to people suffering from other challenges and support caregivers, single moms, identifying people, and more. The company also plans to expand its engineering team to improve upon the technology in place.
The app provides online support groups to help people struggling with mental and physical health challenges. By using AI technology, the Circles app asks users a series of questions to match individuals in groups with people going through similar issues in life such as divorce, loss, parenting issues, and personality traits. Within these groups, a professional facilitator is assigned to help navigate these conversations, according to the company.
Research has shown that developing meaningful connections in group settings is key to overcoming life’s obstacles, such as divorce and separation or cancer.
Circles platform matches people facing similar challenges and has facilitated more than 100,000 hours of support to date.
“We all go through issues in our lives where we need someone to talk to. But not every challenge requires therapy and, more importantly, sometimes the best way to feel better is to surround yourself with people who actually understand you in a truly empathetic way,” said Irad Eichler, founder, and CEO of Circles. ”
Irad Eichler added: This desire to connect with others who are going through the same challenges often means we wind up on Facebook groups or these other unstructured online forums, but those outlets don’t enable the types of meaningful connections needed to help people feel better. With Circles, people never have to face their struggles alone.”
Telehealth companies raised a record $5 billion in 1H 2021, a 150% increase year-over-year compared to $2 billion raised in 1H 2020, according to the recently released Mercom’s 1H 2021 Digital Health Funding and M&A Report.
