Pomelo Care Raises $46M for Maternal Health Platform
Venture capital firms First Round Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health led Pomelo Care’s Series B round.
Digital health companies will use the funds to expand partnerships with payers. Pomelo Care provides maternal and newborn care services. The company’s care model is based on the analysis of claims and health record data. The company seeks to proactively identify risk factors during pregnancy and after birth to provide better care outcomes.
“Pomelo is one of the few health tech companies to achieve true scale,” Dr. Vinita Agarwala, general partner at a16z Bio + Health and a member of PomeloCare’s board of directors, said in a news release. “This scale is evidenced by our partnerships with major Medicaid and private insurance plans covering more than 3 million lives. This creates opportunities to collaborate with obstetricians, delivery rooms and neonatal intensive care units across the country, providing quality, technology-enabled care to hundreds of thousands of pregnant women and newborns.”
Pomelo Care has published research showing a seven-fold increase in mental health screening rates among new mothers and a 40% reduction in the risk of perinatal depression.
CNY hospital gets $40M for new mental health program
New York Governor Kathy Hawkle announced that the state will provide $39.1 million in funding to nine hospitals to set up emergency psychiatric units.
The initiative is aimed at enhancing emergency care for people experiencing mental health crises. In a news release, the governor’s office called the “comprehensive psychiatric emergency programs” the main entry point into the population behavioral health system. These programs aim to provide a wide range of services and can house patients for up to 72 hours.
Programs supported by the grant will also include mobile crisis services. Once established, New York will have 31 comprehensive psychiatric emergency programs.
Canary Speech wins $13 million
Provo, Utah-based startup Canary Speech Inc. has raised $13 million in a Series A round.
The round was led by Cortes Capital LLC, Sorenson Communications LLC, SMK (Japan) and Hackensack Meridian Health.
The company uses biomarkers to assess and track mental health and neurological disorders. Canary Speech has nine patents underpinning its service. The funding will be used to expand the team to support the company’s growth.
Canary Capital says its AI-powered services will allow clients to access its technology through application programming interfaces (APIs) for use in contact centers, ambient clinical listening, remote patient monitoring and annual health checks.
“There are technologies that have the potential to truly transform the way healthcare is operated, and Canary is committed to pioneering voice biomarkers and ambient listening to improve healthcare,” Canary Speech co-founder and CEO Henry O’Connell said in a news release.
Startup mental health provider ifeel raises $20M
Madrid, Spain-based ifeel has raised $20 million in a Series B round led by FinTLV Ventures and Korelya Capital, with participation from SCOR Ventures, Nauta and UNIQA Ventures.
According to a blog post on its website, the company has secured $40 million since it was founded in 2017. It was originally founded as a direct-to-consumer therapy company but now works directly with health insurance plans and employers.
ifeel uses AI to perform initial assessments, develop personalized treatment plans and support self-care. Its previous funding round totaled $10.7 million. The company will use the funds to expand into existing and new markets. It will also fund the development of new products.
The company employs more than 600 psychologists who speak 26 languages and operate in 30 countries.
ifeel helps companies gain data-driven insights into employee mental health to inform business decisions and address population-level healthcare costs across disability, productivity and health claims.
3LS Ventures invests in college sports mental health company
The venture capital arm of Nashville, Tennessee-based 3LS has made a new investment in a company targeting college students.
3LS Ventures announced in June that it had made a “strategic investment” in The Zone, a company that helps monitor and improve the mental health of student-athletes. The platform does this using content and telehealth. The platform is used by Lehigh University, Seton Hill University and the University of North Carolina at Asheville, according to a news release.
The announcement did not disclose the amount of funding. According to public filings, The Zone disclosed a $600,000 debt funding round to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
3LS Inc. announced the formation of 3LS Ventures in November 2023. At the time, the company described the effort as a “new behavioral health venture studio.” 3LS Ventures has also invested in Hope Nation Campus, which offers physical trauma intervention programs for colleges and universities.
3LS Ventures’ first investment was in Attend Behavior, a digital startup that supports parents of children with autism through educational content and tools.
Team mental health app gets $1.5M
INVI MindHealth secured a $1.5 million seed round for its team-focused mental health tracking and tools app. The app uses biometric data, including data from wearable devices, and other inputs to track and score users’ mental health. It also creates a buddy system that allows users to get and receive support from other team members and team leaders.
The funding will be used to improve the app’s user interface, integrate more content, and develop a new team leader dashboard called “Overwatch” that allows leaders to monitor their users’ teams.
The company was founded in 2020 by CEO Jonathan Wilson while he was a student at Oxford University “after multiple SEAL team teammates committed suicide,” according to a news release.
Wilson is a former Navy SEAL and stock trader at Goldman Sachs.
The company is partnering with government agencies and emergency personnel to better understand employee mental health and reduce the effects of high-stress environments, and it’s partnering with a university in Texas to study the effects of psychedelic therapy on veterans with PTSD.
