Elin.ai raises €600K to launch real-time psychological support app for Gen Z

Elin.ai
  • Czech startup Elin.ai has raised EUR 600K pre-seed investment from Presto Ventures, BD Partners, and angel investors. 
  • Their latest milestone is the launch of a native mobile app with core features for instant, real-time psychological support of its Gen Z users.
  • Elin.ai boosts Gen Z’s digital health and reduces the negative impacts of online communication and content consumption on their mental well-being.

Elin.ai is a mobile app that acts like a ‘cognitive antivirus’ – it keeps an eye on the user’s online experience and analyzes the content they consume or produce. Elin.ai has a long-term memory, gradually learns about the user’s world and improves their personality model. Thanks to this, the app also allows users to get to know themselves and their identity better. 

The startup uses LLMs to deliver accurate and personalized psychological response to screenshots provided by Gen Z users. In the form of a chat, the app then helps them understand and cope with the content by providing useful context, advice, or interventions to protect their mental wellbeing.

Study: 30-40% of US and EU teens suffer from social media-induced depression

According to a McKinsey study, 20 percent of EU teenagers suffer from depression or chronic anxiety due to social media. At the same time, there’s a global shortage of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic care for children and youth. This is highlighted by several studies, including recent research by Prof. Jonathan Haidt.

“I am struck by the huge discrepancy between the number of parents who are afraid to let their kids play outside by themselves, even though they are naturally very well equipped to handle that – yet, at the same time, leave their children completely on their own in the online world where we actually have no evolutionarily adapted defense mechanisms at all. On top of that, both us and our kids are constantly bombarded by super-optimized algorithms that aim to maximize our screen time and click-through rate,” said Jan Romportl, CEO and co-founder of Elin.ai.

The Elin.ai web app trials have been completed with participation from the core Gen Z community, involving around 500 users. The company’s focus for the current pre-seed phase is to fully roll out the native mobile app, targeting a minimum of 5,000 active users. Subsequently, the next stage of their pre-seed funding will center on conducting research in foreign markets.

Elin.ai aims to address these issues by offering more than general anti-anxiety strategies like breathing exercises or meditation. It provides real-time support for users’ specific problems, helping teens and young adults avoid harmful thought and emotional patterns caused by extreme or manipulative content.

The Elin.ai team

Addressing mental health to mitigate societal polarization

Elin.ai also has the potential to positively impact broader societal issues. Poor mental health can lead to feelings of anxiety, helplessness, and loss of control, prompting people to seek compensatory mechanisms such as extremism or rigid thinking. These mechanisms contribute to societal polarization, making it harder to address global challenges like climate change, poverty, and gender inequality.

“Negative feedback on social media can have a devastating impact on young people. And many children lack a supportive home base or parents who could help them cope. Compound this with the fact that institutional psychiatric and psychotherapeutic care for children is woefully inaccessible – a situation that will take many years to remedy. That’s why we believe current AI technologies offer a way to mitigate the youth mental health crisis,” said prof. Jiri Horacek, CRDO and co-founder.

For Presto Ventures, this represents a “very exceptional investment”, with several reasons behind it, as they explain.

“First, because it’s in the B2C user app category, which we don’t usually focus on. Second, because Jan Romportl, a renowned AI and deeptech expert, has been working with us for years. That’s why we didn’t hesitate when Jan approached us with his project, especially in such an impactful sector. And thirdly, Elin.ai is the only startup from our 60-strong portfolio that we backed in the so-called ‘idea stage’. We have full confidence in the founding team and their mission.” said Premysl Rubes, founder and managing partner at  Presto Ventures.

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