Digital psychological well being firm Headspace Well being introduced Thursday it has acquired the Shine app, a psychological wellness platform centered on culturally competent and inclusive choices.
Based in 2016, Shine gives self-guided content material, together with meditations and self-care programs on matters like stress and bounds, in addition to digital group workshops.
The corporate’s cofounders and co-CEOs Marah Lidey and Naomi Hirabayashi will tackle management roles in Headspace’s product and advertising and marketing groups. Some Shine engineers and leaders in its shopper successes and advertising and marketing teams may also transfer to Headspace.
“The acquisition of the Shine app underscores the persevering with significance of infusing variety, fairness, inclusion and belonging into the material of every part we do,” Headspace CEO Russell Glass mentioned in an announcement. “By integrating each the sturdy content material and gifted staff from Shine, we’ll be capable to collectively scale the range of choices and experiences that we are able to convey to our clients and members.”
THE LARGER TREND
Headspace Well being is the results of the merger between meditation app Headspace and digital psychological well being firm Ginger, which closed in October final yr.
The Shine deal is not the corporate’s first acquisition this yr both. In January, Headspace introduced it had acquired Sayana, maker of AI-enabled psychological health-tracking and sleep apps. When that deal was introduced, Headspace pitched the Sayana acquisition as a approach so as to add AI capabilities to personalize content material primarily based on the consumer’s wants.
Psychological well being remains to be a main medical space in digital well being funding, regardless of the variety of rivals within the area. A Rock Well being report on the digital well being funding panorama by way of the primary half of the yr famous merger and acquisition exercise has slowed in contrast with 2021. However the report’s authors famous in July that the quantity might choose up.
“Like funding numbers, we don’t foresee a return to 2021 M&A tempo, although we anticipate 2022’s M&A exercise to develop steadily from 2020 baselines,” Ashwini Nagappan and Adriana Krasniansky wrote. “We’ll be watching to see if well-positioned digital well being corporations in more and more saturated segments of digital well being begin to purchase smaller rivals – which might imply the most important waves of digital well being consolidation are simply getting began.”
ON THE RECORD
“After six years of constructing Shine, we’re thrilled to affix Headspace Well being to scale the pressing work of closing the fairness hole in psychological well being – one thing Naomi and I’ve usually felt first-hand,” Shine’s Lidey mentioned in an announcement.
“We imagine that everybody deserves to really feel included of their psychological well being journey, and with our mixed staff at Headspace Well being, we’re on an thrilling path to realize that shared imaginative and prescient.”
