Thrive Therapies, a Dallas-based technology-enabled pediatric healthcare company, has raised $7.7 million in funding led by LiveOak Ventures, with participation from Activate Venture Partners and the Charter School Growth Fund.
The financing will support expansion into additional markets, recruitment of clinical professionals, and further development of Thrive Clinical, the company’s proprietary clinical intelligence platform.
Founded by Dr. Kristin McGraner, Thrive Therapies provides school-based healthcare services for children with disabilities, including speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, psychological evaluations, and behavioral health support.
The company currently serves students across more than 200 schools and school districts in six states: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington.
Thrive’s model places clinicians directly inside schools, allowing students to receive services in familiar educational environments while improving coordination among therapists, educators, and families.
The company aims to address two challenges affecting special education programs: shortages of qualified healthcare professionals and the administrative complexity involved in documenting services and obtaining Medicaid reimbursement.
More than 8 million children with disabilities require educational and related services across the United States, according to figures cited by the company.
School districts frequently struggle to recruit and retain specialists, including speech-language pathologists, occupational and physical therapists, school psychologists, and behavioral health clinicians.
At the same time, districts must maintain extensive documentation to support Medicaid reimbursement for eligible healthcare services.
Thrive Therapies combines direct clinical care with technology designed to measure student progress and streamline reimbursement processes.
Its Thrive Clinical platform enables clinicians to document therapeutic outcomes at the session level rather than relying primarily on annual assessments.
The system has recorded more than 18,000 therapy sessions, providing data that can help therapists and school administrators evaluate student progress and adjust treatment plans more frequently.
The same clinical documentation can also support Medicaid billing, reducing the need for separate administrative workflows.
Thrive believes this approach can help districts recover eligible reimbursement while allowing clinicians to devote more time to providing care.
The company reported that more than 85% of students receiving services through its model met their annual Individualized Education Program goals.
Additionally, 46% of students met their goals and no longer required services, compared with a national average of approximately 8% cited by Thrive.
These results, according to the company, demonstrate the potential for more frequent progress monitoring and coordinated care to improve outcomes while making clinical resources available to additional students.
Thrive operates under multiyear agreements with public school districts and has additional deployments underway as it expands geographically.
McGraner previously spent 11 years as founder and CEO of STEM Preparatory Academy, a Tennessee-based school system. Earlier in her career, she directed federally funded research at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, studying education policy and outcomes for students with diverse needs.
LiveOak Ventures is an Austin-based early-stage investment firm focused on technology and technology-enabled businesses. Its founders have more than 25 years of venture investing experience and have helped create nearly $5 billion in enterprise value.
The latest financing will help Thrive Therapies expand its clinical workforce and further develop its technology platform while addressing growing demand for school-based healthcare services.
KEY QUOTES:
“I’ve been on every side of this. I ran a school system that paid for these services, I spent years researching whether they worked, and I was a child whose disability was identified late. The constant was that nobody could tell us precisely what a child needed, early enough to matter. That’s what we built Thrive to fix.”
Dr. Kristin McGraner, Founder And CEO Of Thrive Therapies
“Dr. Kristin McGraner and the team at Thrive bring a rare combination of education and clinical leadership and proprietary technology to serve both children and the schools that support them. Thrive has already shown strong traction across multiple regions, and it signals a massive shift in how special education services are delivered, measured and paid for.”
Krishna Srinivasan, Board Member And Founding Partner Of LiveOak Ventures
