BehaVR

Market position

BehaVR is described as a leading innovator in VR digital wellness and digital therapeutics, and as the first immersive digital therapeutics company to deliver treatments across the mental wellness and mental/behavioral condition spectrum on an integrated platform. It operates in a digital therapeutics market projected to exceed $13 billion by 2027, and is among the behavioral-health startups backed by Optum Ventures.

The company cites the neurological effects of immersive VR combined with dynamic personalization through an AI cloud platform, an integrated platform spanning wellness to clinically validated treatments for serious mental illness, and a team drawn from clinicians, researchers and healthcare industry veterans, with a lineage influenced by Humana.

Technology

The company combines virtual reality with cloud computing and machine learning. Its platform personalizes and adapts immersive experiences in real time based on biometrics, clinical protocols and machine learning models, and it has been described as offering AI-driven extended reality (XR) applications, including a clinician AI assistant intended to integrate into existing clinical workflows.

Go-to-market

The company works with healthcare providers, provider organizations and employers, and joined Accenture Ventures' Project Spotlight program, which connects emerging technology startups with Global 2000 companies and provides access to Accenture's domain expertise and enterprise clients.

Healthcare organizations, clinicians and therapists, employers, and patients or health-plan members dealing with anxiety, stress, chronic pain, serious mental illness, addiction recovery and cognitive disorders.

Geography

Headquartered in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, with a portion of staff based in the Louisville area. Services are described as reaching regions including the United States, Australia, Israel, Spain and broader Europe, with stated plans to expand further in Europe and Australia.

History

Aaron Gani, previously chief technology officer at Humana for 12 years, founded BehaVR in Elizabethtown, Kentucky in 2016 and bootstrapped the business for its first couple of years while building the platform. The company was named an Endeavor Entrepreneur in 2019 at an International Selection Panel event in Mexico, raised seed and Series A capital (about $7.2 million in 2021, roughly 80% from Louisville-area investors), and by 2022 had raised approximately $11 million in total. In December 2022 it announced a merger with OxfordVR, an Oxford University spin-out focused on science-based VR treatments for serious mental illness, and received a strategic investment from Accenture Ventures. A $13 million Series B followed in 2023, and later that year the company merged with New Jersey-based Fern Health to become RealizedCare, with Gani as CEO; roughly $5 million more was raised after that merger.

Risks & controversies

Commentary on Optum Ventures' portfolio has situated BehaVR among virtual and digital behavioral-health investments made while UnitedHealth's Optum closed a substantial share of the in-person behavioral-health clinics it had acquired, raising questions about capital shifting from in-person to remote, data-generating care.