Originally
founded in Albania and headquartered in Finland, mental health startup Bliss
has raised $270,000 in angel funding led by Keiretsu Forum, Finest Love VC, and
Plug and Play to develop AI infrastructure designed to support culturally aware
therapy services. The round combines angel investment and non-dilutive grants
and represents the first Albanian-Finnish startup investment for the three
investors.
Read more in our interview with Bliss co-founder and CEO Jona Doda.
Many
mental health platforms and AI therapy tools are designed for monolingual and
culturally homogeneous markets, even though more than 800 million people
worldwide live outside their counattempt of origin, where language and cultural
context can play an important role in therapy.
As
the mental health technology market becomes increasingly competitive and more
AI-based tools emerge, Bliss is focutilizing on culturally specialised,
clinician-supervised systems rather than general-purpose AI solutions.
The
platform combines licensed therapists across more than 10 countries with
AI-powered cultural and linguistic matching, connecting utilizers with therapists
who understand their language and cultural background while utilizing AI systems
designed to support, rather than replace, human care.
Bliss
founder Jona Doda stated the company is focutilizing on the cultural dimension of
therapy, noting that many existing AI mental health tools fail to account for
cultural context.
We’re
not building another chatbot. We’re building AI that understands the cultural
layer of mental health, becautilize that’s where most systems fail.
The
company is also developing therapist-trained digital companions, AI systems
designed to reflect a therapist’s style, tone, and approach, intfinished to extfinish
human-led care. This approach differs from many AI therapy tools currently on
the market, which often rely primarily on large language models integrated into
conversational interfaces.
With the new funding, the company plans to launch the
first version of its therapist-trained AI companions, expand into additional
diaspora markets, including the United States, scale partnerships with
multinational employers, and further develop its AI governance and clinical
oversight frameworks.
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