Portuguese startup Sword Health raises €34.6 million to address global mental health crisis

Porto-based Sword Health, a HealthTech AI Care company, today announced a €34.6 million funding round at a €3.4 billion valuation to accelerate their M&A momentum, global expansion, and the development of foundational AI models.

The round was led by General Catalyst and included participation from Khosla Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Lince Capital, Oxy Capital, Armilar, Indico Capital, and Shilling.

“We’ve rebuilt care delivery from the ground up – replacing a century-old, labor-intensive model with AI that removes barriers to world-class care for everyone who needs it,” said Virgilio Bento, Founder & CEO of Sword Health. “Treating more than half a million people and saving clients nearly a billion dollars in unnecessary healthcare costs has proven that Sword’s pioneering AI Care Model is the future of healthcare.

“This funding is a milestone that allows us to deepen our foundational AI research and to accelerate our expansion into new healthcare verticals like mental health – a field still dominated by unscalable and ineffective models – bringing truly life-changing care to millions who struggle with mental health around the world, the same way we did it for millions with physical pain.”

Founded in 2015, Sword Health looks to shift healthcare from human-first to AI-first through its AI care platform, making world-class healthcare available anytime, anywhere, while significantly reducing costs for payers, self-insured employers, national health systems, and other healthcare organisations.

Sword began by focusing on physical pain care with AI at its core, and has since expanded into pelvic health, movement health, and now mental health. Since 2020, more than 500,000 members across three continents have completed 6.5 million AI sessions, reportedly helping Sword’s 1,000+ enterprise clients avoid nearly €865 million in unnecessary healthcare costs.

Backed by 40 clinical studies and over 40 patents, Sword Health has raised more than €259 million from investors, including Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Transformation Capital and Founders Fund.

“At General Catalyst, we back companies driving meaningful change in healthcare, and we believe Sword Health sits squarely at the forefront of that transformation,” said Chris Bischoff, Managing Director at General Catalyst and Sword board director. “By fusing sophisticated AI with human clinical expertise, Sword is re-imagining the entire care continuum – from physical pain care to today’s launch of Mind for mental health – expanding access, improving outcomes, and lowering costs at a global scale. We’re proud to support Sword as it accelerates the shift toward truly AI-first healthcare.”

Along with the funding announcement, the company also unveiled Mind, a mental health solution that combines AI and licensed clinicians to deliver continuous, personalised care, looking to transforming mental health from episodic talk therapy to a proactive, always-on support system.

With the launch of Mind, Sword is expanding its AI Care model to tackle one of healthcare’s biggest challenges: access to effective and high-quality mental health care.

According to data provided by Sword, nearly 1 billion people worldwide live with a mental health condition. Yet care remains fragmented, reactive, and inaccessible. In the U.S. alone, more than 60 million adults experienced mental illness last year, but most never received meaningful care. Despite broad availability of mental health solutions, access remains challenging, utilisation remains low, and outcomes aren’t improving.

Sword believes that traditional therapy, based on episodic 40-minute sessions often weeks apart, can’t keep up with the round-the-clock reality of mental health, and reflects a largely outdated, superficial and one-dimensional view. It captures only fragments of a person’s life, missing the everyday factors that shape mental wellbeing: sleep, stress, relationships, environment.

Mind looks to tackle this with a proactive, 24/7 model that integrates cutting-edge AI with licensed, Ph.D-level mental health specialists.

Three innovations power Mind:

• Phoenix: A personalised AI Care agent specifically designed to address mental health conditions in a comprehensive, tailored, and holistic way.
• M-band: A proprietary wearable device that captures the patient’s full environmental and physiological context, detecting early indicators of depression and anxiety to enable proactive outreach by Mind clinicians.
• Mind clinicians: Ph.D.-level mental health professionals work in concert with Phoenix to continuously engage with patients daily, ensuring the human touch remains central to care.

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