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Amae Health is building an in-person approach to mental healthcare in an increasingly digital space | TechCrunch

May 4, 2024 10:18 PM0


When Sonia García and Stas Sokolin decided to launch Amae Health to solve the broken care system for people with severe mental illness, they were already intimately familiar with the industry’s issues.

“I started thinking about this problem a very long time ago,” said Sokolin, Amae’s CEO. “I grew up with a sister who had bipolar disorder for many, many years, and as a family we always struggled to find her care. It seemed like everything was so piecemeal, and it broke our family apart.”

Garcia had her own experiences with the mental healthcare system, too. She lost her father to suicide when she was 16 years old, and then she and her family spent years as caregivers for her brother with schizoaffective and bipolar disorder. Sokolin and García were introduced by mutual friends at Stanford because they were both passionate about this area. The pair knew the system could be better.

They launched Amae Health in 2022 to be a new approach to helping patients with severe mental illness. Amae brings resources — including family and individual therapy, social workers, psychiatric care and medicine management — all under one roof. One physical roof, that is, as Amae is focused on an in-person approach. The startup hired Dr. Scott Fears, who had experience with this all-encompassing care approach through his work with the Los Angeles Veterans Affair Hospital, so they could iterate on and improve an existing model as opposed to starting a new one from scratch.

Amae Health just raised a $15 million Series A round led by Quiet Capital with participation from Healthier Capital, former One Medical CEO Amir Dan Rubin’s firm; Baszucki Group and Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi, in addition to all of the company’s seed investors. The startup currently has one clinic in Los Angeles and plans to use the capital to expand. Its next center will be in Raleigh, North Carolina, with locations in Houston, Ohio and New York to follow shortly after.

The funds will also be used to continue building out the company’s data platform. Sokolin said the company is using AI to go through the troves of data it collects at its clinic to find ways they can continue to improve care.

Over the past few years, many startups have launched to improve the mental healthcare system, but Amae Health’s focus area and approach stand out. Most of the mental health startups that launched in the pandemic are digital first and focused on anxiety and depression. Amae looks very different.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with having a slate of companies focused on anxiety and depression, and it’s good to see founders focused on helping people with severe mental illness, too. Severe mental health problems affect 14.1 million people in the U.S., according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But there’s a lot less innovation in the sector.

That’s not too surprising: Solutions for people with severe mental illness don’t perfectly fit a traditional venture model in the way many telemedicine and digital solutions do. People with severe mental illness need care that is in person, making solutions more costly and slower to scale.

“When we first went out to raise money, a lot of venture investors were asking, why are you doing this in person? Why is this not virtual?” Sokolin said. “The fact of the matter is you can’t treat someone who is having delusions or auditory hallucinations virtually. The same way you can’t treat cancer virtually, you can’t treat this virtually.”

The nature of the business also means that they aren’t expanding to all 50 states right away as some digital health startups have been able to. García said the company is fine with that because it’s more focused on the outcomes than the scaling.

“That is about intentional growth and scale, not the winner-take-all market, but really being considerate and conscious about how we do grow and ensuring we are generating lasting change and recovery in these individuals’ lives,” Garcia said.

Trying to scale too fast has hurt some mental health startups. Therapy telemedicine platform Cerebral has come under fire for how it advertises to potential customers and how it handles patient data in its pursuit of scale.

This slower growth approach can and has worked in venture before, said Sokolin, a former VC at both the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Health2047. One Medical, a full-service healthcare system, including in-person care, is a prime example. The company raised more than $500 million before getting scooped up by Amazon for $3.9 billion. It’s not surprising the former CEO is a current investor in Amae.

Sokolin and García are fine with the fact that their approach has turned off some potential investors. They are focused more on building a system for quality care, not just how many patients they can see.

“There are way more individuals than anyone could ever treat,” Sokolin said about the scope of individuals with severe mental illness. “We are never going to treat anything more than a small fraction, but we want to be the best-in-class provider for those members.”


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Meta's approach to election security in the frame as EU probes Fb, Instagram | TechCrunch

April 30, 2024 5:23 PM0


The European Union announced Tuesday it suspects Meta’s social networking platforms, Facebook and Instagram, of breaking the bloc’ rules for larger platforms in relation to election integrity.

The Commission has opened the formal infringement proceedings to investigate Meta under the the Digital Services Act (DSA), an online governance and content moderation framework. Reminder: Penalties for confirmed breaches of the regime can include fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover.

The EU’s concerns here span several areas: Meta’s moderation of political ads — which it suspects is inadequate; Meta’s policies for moderating non-paid political content, which the EU suspects are opaque and overly restrictive, whereas the DSA demands platforms’ policies deliver transparency and accountability; and Meta’s policies that relate to enabling outsiders to monitor elections.

The EU’s proceeding also targets Meta’s processes for users to flag illegal content, which it’s concerned aren’t user friendly enough; and its internal complaints handling system for content moderation decisions, which it also suspects are ineffective.

“When Meta get paid for displaying advertising it doesn’t appear that they have put in place effective mechanism of content moderation,” said a Commission official briefing journalists on background on the factors that led it to open the bundle of investigations. “Including for advertisements that could be generated by a generative AI — such as, for example, deep fakes — and these have been exploited or appear to have be exploited by malicious actors for foreign interference.”

The EU is drawing on some independent research, itself enabled by another DSA requirement that large platforms publish a searchable ad archive, which it suggested has shown Meta’s ad platform being exploited by Russian influence campaigns targeting elections via paid ads. It also said it’s found evidence of a lack of effective ads moderation by Meta being generally exploited scammers — with the Commission pointing to a surge in financial scam ads on the platform.

On organic (non-paid) political content, the EU said Meta seems to limit the visibility of political content for users by default but does does not appear to provide sufficient explanation — either of how it identifies content as political nor how moderation is done. The Commission also said it had found evidence to suggest Meta is shadowbanning (aka limiting the visibility/reach) certain accounts with high volumes of political posting.

If confirmed, such actions would be a breach of the DSA as the regulation puts a legal obligation on platforms to transparently communicate the policies they apply to their users.

On election monitoring, the EU is particularly concerned about Meta’s recent decision to shutter access to CrowdTangle, a tool researchers have previously been able to use for real-time election monitoring.

It’s not opened an investigation on this yet but has sent Meta an urgent formal request for information (RFI) about its decision to deprecate the research tool — giving the company five days to respond. Briefing journalists about the development, Commission officials suggested they could take more action in this area, such as opening a formal investigation, depending on Meta’s response.

The short deadline for a response clearly conveys a sense of urgency. Last year, soon after the EU took up the baton overseeing larger platforms’ DSA compliance with a subset of transparency and risk mitigation rules, the Commission named election integrity as one of its priority areas for its enforcement of the regulation.

During today’s briefing, Commission officials pointed to the upcoming European elections in June — questioning the timing of Meta’s decision to deprecate CrowdTangle. “Our concern — and this is also why we consider this to be a particular urgent issue — is that just a few weeks ahead of the European election Meta has decided to deprecate this tool, which has allowed journalists… civil society actors and researchers in, for example, the 2020 US elections, to monitor election related risks.”

The Commission is worried another tool Meta has said will replace CrowdTangle does not have equivalent/superior capabilities. Notably the EU is concerned it will not let outsiders monitor election risks in real-time. Officials also raised concerns about slow onboarding for Meta’s new tool.

“At this point we’re requesting information from Meta on how they intend to remedy this the lack of real time election monitoring tool,” said one senior Commission official during the briefing. “We are also requesting some additional documents from them on the decision that has led them to deprecate Crowdtangle and their assessment on the capabilities of the new tool.”

Meta was contacted for comment about the Commission’s actions. In a statement a company spokesperson said: “We have a well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms. We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.”

These are the first formal DSA investigations Meta has faced — but not the first RFIs. Last year the EU sent Meta a flurry of requests for information — including in relation to the Israel-Hamas war, election security and child safety, among others.

In light of the variety of information requests on Meta platforms, the company could face additional DSA investigations as Commission enforcers work through multiple submissions.

Meta faces more questions in Europe about child safety risks on Instagram

EU dials up scrutiny of major platforms over GenAI risks ahead of elections


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

Proxima Fusion raises $21M to build on its 'stellarator' approach to nuclear fusion | TechCrunch

April 18, 2024 8:50 PM0


Venture capitalists’ appetite for fusion startups has been up and down in the last few years. For instance, the Fusion Industry Association found that while nuclear fusion companies had attracted over $6 billion in investment in 2023, $1.4 billion more than in 2022, the 27% growth proved slower than in 2022, as investors battled external fears such as inflation.

However, numbers don’t tell the full story: Venture interest in the field has remained strong as startups begin to find novel ways to potentially capture the power of the sun to produce safe, limitless energy.

The field reached a significant milestone in 2022 when the Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility managed to bring about a fusion reaction that produced more power than was required to spark a fuel pellet. And then in August last year, the team confirmed that their first test wasn’t just good fortune. The road to true fusion power remains long, but the kicker is that it’s no longer theoretical.

The latest company looking to make a name for itself in the space is Proxima Fusion, the first spin-out from the lauded Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP). Munich-based Proxima has raised €20 million ($21.7 million) in a seed round to begin building its first generation of fusion power plants.

The company bases its technology on “quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators” with high-temperature superconductors. In plain English, a stellarator is a doughnut-shaped ring of precisely positioned magnets that can contain the plasma from which fusion energy is born. However, stellarators are  extremely hard to make, as they position the magnets in rather odd shapes, and require extremely precise engineering.

Proxima Fusion claims it came up with a way to address these issues using both engineering solutions and advanced computing in 2022, and as a spin-out, the company has now built on research from the Max Planck IPP, which built the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) experiment, the world’s largest stellarator.

The new approach to fusion is only possible because of the ability to use AI to simulate the behavior of the plasma, thus bringing the prospect of viable nuclear fusion nearer, Dr. Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion, told TechCrunch over a call.

German startup Marvel Fusion, which has been funded by German VC Earlybird, uses laser containment to spark the reaction, and when I asked Sciortino why Proxima uses stellarators, he said, “With lasers, you take a small pellet and blast heat at it with many very powerful lasers. That releases energy via fusion, but you’re compressing something and letting it explode. Whereas what we are working on is that actual confinement. So it’s not an explosion, but in a steady state; it’s continuous in operation.”

Sciortino, who completed his PhD at MIT on tokamak nuclear projects, said Proxima will leverage what has been learned from the W7-X device, which has had more than €1 billion in public investment. He added the projected timeline to get to fusion energy is by the mid-2030s. “We’re looking at, give or take, 15 years. Building an intermediate device in Munich most likely by 2031 is our objective. If we manage to get to that then the middle of the 2030s is possible.”

The startup’s investors are equally convinced.

Ian Hogarth, a partner at one of Proxima’s investors, Plural, told me, “There are two big things that I think are really compelling about what Proxima are doing. First, their stellarator has benefited from two big, big trends in high-temperature superconductors and progress in computer-aided simulation of complex, multi-physics systems. And secondly, the world’s most advanced stellarator in the whole world is in North Germany.”

He thinks that Proxima being the first spin-out from that ambitious government project will give it the edge it needs to succeed: “It’s a classic example of the ‘entrepreneurial state,’ where a startup can build on top of this incredible public investment.”

That said, Proxima is not the only player in the race for fusion. Helion Energy raised a $500 million Series E two years ago, led by tech entrepreneur and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for instance. And there are at least 43 other companies developing nuclear fusion technologies.

Proxima’s seed round was led by Redalpine, with participation from the Bavarian government-backed Bayern Kapital, German government-backed DeepTech & Climate Fonds and the Max Planck Foundation. Plural and existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, Wilbe, UVC Partners and the Tomorrow Fund of Visionaries Club also participated in the round.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

NewRetirement aims to shake up retirement planning with a holistic approach | TechCrunch

April 12, 2024 11:29 PM0


When entrepreneur Stephen Chen’s mom began approaching retirement age, she was forced to borrow money from Chen — and Chen’s brother — to make ends meet. They wanted to help, but the siblings also wanted to figure out a more sustainable, long-term solution that’d help their mom retire without having to worry about finances.

Chen tried to get guidance from a financial adviser, but no one would take his mother as a client because her net worth wasn’t considered high enough. So Chen started building spreadsheets and financial models himself, doing his best to figure out how his mom could live the retirement lifestyle that she wanted.

“People like my mom lack the tools to look at their money holistically and strategically so they can make informed decisions, monitor their financial situation, understand which levers to pull and when and make the connection between the choices they make today and the long-term ramifications to their plan,” Chen told TechCrunch. “There’s a confluence of factors that may alter the future of financial planning and advising.”

It was after Chen helped his mom lower her expenses, figure out when to claim Social Security, decide when to downsize and take other steps to become financially independent that Chen realized lots of other older Americans were facing the same challenges.

So Chen founded NewRetirement, a Mill Valley-based company building software to help people create financial retirement plans. Today, NewRetirement’s direct-to-consumer products power financial planning for 70,000 users managing close to $100 billion in their own financial plans, according to Chen.

“Our models go beyond savings and investments, taking into account all of the other factors in a person’s life, from home equity, healthcare costs and taxes to Medicare and Social Security,” Chen said. “Every time a user makes a change, we run thousands of simulations in order to help them optimize their plan … We account for thousands of different scenarios, enabling users to confidently map out accumulation and decumulation projections with digital guidance.”

NewRetirement is Chen’s second startup after Embark, an online college search and admissions tool he launched in 1995. And, like Embark, Chen sees NewRetirement as a digital solution to a transition faced by millions of Americans.

“120 million Americans over age 50 hold 80% of the wealth in this country,” Chen said, “But running out of money remains a top 10 fear, with nearly half of Americans saying they are worried about it.”

NewRetirement’s platform uses predictive modeling and data analytics to help users suss out the right savings approaches. Image Credits: NewRetirement

Indeed, the majority of Americans — as many as 65%, per Charles Schwab’s Modern Wealth Survey 2023 — have no formal financial plan. And while 37% of respondents say that they work with a financial adviser, two-thirds of Americans believe that their financial planning needs improvement, according to Northwestern Mutual’s Planning and Progress Study 2023.

NewRetirement, which began as a consumer offering and in 2021 expanded to the enterprise, charges $120 per year for access to a suite of tools, calculators, recommendations and scenario comparisons and ~$1,500 per year for check-ins with a certified financial planner. In addition, NewRetirement sells a subscription-based private label version of its tools aimed at financial advisers.

Now, you might wonder, what makes NewRetirement different from startups like Retirable, which similarly provides an array of retirement planning tools and access to asset managers? Chen asserts that NewRetirement is one of the few — and perhaps only — financial planning platform that serves consumers as well as advisers and workplaces.

“Our core innovation is allowing anyone to create a plan with industrial-strength tools, enabling advisers to collaborate with the end user and making this available at scale through enterprise partners who bring it to their customers,” Chen said. “As more financial services companies see their offerings like investment management become commoditized, there’s huge value in helping clients and prospects think about their money holistically. By offering self-directed digital planning to clients versus starting with a human adviser, they can scale and serve any number of users, learn about them, help them make good decisions and position their products and services more effectively.”

Chen says that about 70% of NewRetirement’s revenue is enterprise presently, with the remaining 30% coming from consumer customers. The platform has 20,000 individual subscribers and “several” wealth management clients as well as “multiple” enterprise customers including Nationwide, which recently expanded an existing partnership with NewRetirement.

That momentum no doubt helped NewRetirement to cinch its Series A funding round this month.

The company raised $20 million in a tranche that brings its total raised to $20.8 million, led by Allegis Capital with participation from Nationwide Ventures, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Motley Fool Ventures and others. Chen says that the cash infusion will be used to expand 50-employee NewRetirement’s enterprise products, scale up onboarding, accelerate R&D efforts and build capacity to meet future demand.

“With this new capital, we will have three to four years of runway,” Chen said. “That gives us time to continue to scale our enterprise partnerships and enhance our product. What’s more, the current downturn is enabling us to bring in incredible talent. We have a strong team in place and will expand headcount further this year.”


Software Development in Sri Lanka

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