A new AI therapy and coaching app called The Path has raised $14.3 million in seed funding, with motivational speaker and author Tony Robbins joining as a co-founder alongside former Calm employees Anson Whitmer and Tyler Sheaffer. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, where Robbins is a partner, with additional participation from athletes Apolo Anton Ohno and Deontay Wilder, and Designer Fund.
Announced in 2026, The Path grew out of an earlier mental health app for men called Mental, where an AI interactive audio feature proved particularly popular with users. Whitmer, who holds a PhD in psychology and worked at Calm until 2021, says the app was born from a belief that existing mental health tools don’t go far enough. “The issue is, people’s problems are just too idiosyncratic. They’re too personal. They’re unique,” he said.
A central concern driving the startup is safety. Whitmer argues that consumer chatbots are “optimized for engagement” — reinforcing users’ existing ideas and resolving problems quickly — which runs counter to how therapy works. The Path’s AI model is post-trained from open-source models rather than built on major consumer LLMs. The company says its model scored 95 on Vera-MH, a mental health safety AI benchmark, compared to a top score of 65 for consumer chatbots.
The app lets users choose from 11 virtual AI therapists and adjust preferences such as the level of directness. Robbins’ involvement has shaped the product to incorporate his self-improvement methods alongside therapeutic approaches.
The Path is currently free while building its user base, with plans to charge $40 per month going forward. The startup points to the scale of unmet need as a core motivation — noting that there are not enough therapists globally to provide individual care to everyone who needs it, and that OpenAI has reported at least 900 people use ChatGPT for mental health queries each week.
Source: TechCrunch