- Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global announced recently that it acquired Boundless Mind. These are the details.
Thrive Global — a leading behavior change technology company founded by Arianna Huffington in November 2016 — announced recently that it acquired Boundless Mind (formerly known as Dopamine Labs). Boundless Mind is a neuroscience-based AI company and a leader in behavioral design.
This acquisition is furthering Thrive Global’s commitment to building on its leading behavior change technology platform — which utilizes data collection and science to reduce stress and burnout along with helping individuals and organizations unlock their full potential.
“This acquisition is an exciting milestone for Thrive Global,” said Huffington. “Since our founding in 2016, we have been committed to cracking the code on behavior change to help individuals and organizations end the stress and burnout epidemic and unlock their full potential. And it’s more important than ever that we leverage the latest technology to help people build healthy habits. Boundless Mind shares our mission to create a world where everyone can thrive At a time when preventable, lifestyle-related diseases account for 75% of healthcare costs and mental health problems are escalating, the only way to change health outcomes is to shift human behavior. The Boundless acquisition is a critical next step in scaling Thrive’s behavior change platform to millions of users around the world.”
Ever since Thrive launched in 2016, it worked with some of the leading employers and brands in the world, including Accenture, JPMorgan, Hilton, Bank of America, and Procter & Gamble in order to bring behavior change technology, content, and people experience programs to employees and consumers to improve their well-being and performance.
“Thrive Global is the perfect place for us to build on everything we’ve achieved at Boundless and accelerate the next generation of technology to power healthy behavior change,” added T. Dalton Combs PhD, CEO and co-founder of Boundless Mind. “At Boundless our mission has been to create a world where hyper-personalized technology supports human thriving. Arianna and Thrive Global have discovered what everyone in wellness tech has been hunting for: a scalable business model. Without a doubt, Thrive Global is the company best positioned to win the future of enterprise wellbeing. It has global reach and incredible access to the market; And we’re so excited to be accelerating Thrive’s growth, powering its platform with AI and data-driven behavior change.”
Thrive announced a partnership with Stanford Medicine earlier this year. This partnership combines Stanford’s research with Thrive’s behavior change expertise into a digital enterprise program designed for helping companies unlock better mental health. Plus Stanford researchers also lent their expertise to a program to help parents navigate their journey with less stress and more joy.
Boundless Mind’s innovative technology combines neuroscience and AI to optimize, personalize and target recommendations to users to inspire positive behavior change. And Boundless’s technology learns to predict when and how to deliver technology-driven rewards to fuel healthy habit-formation for every unique user. As Boundless integrates into Thrive’s behavior change technology platform, Thrive will be able to make meaningful behavior change more achievable and more sustainable for its users.
“The Product Development team at Boundless is thrilled with the opportunity to scale and evolve the world’s most powerful behavior change technology platform at Thrive Global,” added Jake Dodd, Boundless Mind’s CTO.
Going forward, the Boundless team will integrate immediately into Thrive Global’s product and engineering team and will be based at Thrive Global’s San Francisco and Los Angeles offices.
“We’re thrilled to see the continued growth and market expansion at Thrive Global,” commented Somesh Dash, a general partner at IVP and member of Thrive Global’s Board of Directors. “The combination of Thrive’s mission and Boundless Mind’s technology is truly remarkable and the integration will help Thrive scale a game-changing and differentiated behavior change technology platform to enterprises around the world.”
Boundless Mind’s technology platform exists at the intersection of mind and machine using an understanding of the human brain to design AI-personalized and real-time UX interventions that improve user behavior and drive results thus allowing teams to build smarter products that more efficiently and positively change human behavior. And the technology has been used effectively to improve outcomes for products in categories spanning health, fitness, productivity, finance, and e-commerce, including a 60% increase in walking, a 30% increase in productivity, and a 21% increase in engagement around diet and exercise.
“This is a tremendous opportunity to distribute the groundbreaking technology that we’ve built at Boundless to Thrive’s global customer base. We couldn’t be happier to join Arianna and her team in accelerating human thriving,” explained Matt Mayberry, COO at Boundless Mind.
With this acquisition, Boundless investors including Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and Esther Dyson are also joining Thrive Global’s cap table.
Thrive also recently closed a funding round led by strategic investor JAZZ Venture Partners. And Thrive Global’s current investors, including IVP, Marc Benioff, Ray Dalio, and Kevin Durant also exercised their pro-rata rights in the round. And investor Daniel Loeb and Expanse CEO Tim Junio also joined the round. Including this round, Thrive’s has raised more than $65 million.
“We found a true kindred spirit in Thrive and their mission to unlock human performance by helping individuals reduce stress and increase well-being,” noted JAZZ Managing Partner, Andrew Firlik — who joined Thrive Global’s Board. “Their proven track record in the enterprise and ambitious vision for the future gave us tremendous confidence in Thrive’s future, which we look forward to accelerating with support from the JAZZ team.”
