Portugal Startup Sword Health Secures €34.6 Million Funding To Address Global Mental Health Crisis

The funding will boost its global growth, support more acquisitions, and help build advanced AI models.

The round was led by General Catalyst, with backing 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.”

The company started with AI-powered physical pain care and has expanded into pelvic health, movement health, and now mental health. Since 2020, over 500,000 members across three continents have completed 6.5 million AI sessions—helping Sword’s 1,000+ enterprise clients save nearly €865 million in healthcare costs.

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Supported by 40 clinical studies and holding over 40 patents, Sword Health has raised over €259 million from top investors like 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 its latest funding, Sword Health has launched Mind, a new mental health solution that combines advanced AI with licensed clinicians to deliver continuous, personalised care.

The aim is to shift mental health support from traditional, episodic therapy to a proactive, always-available model. With this launch, Sword expands its AI Care model to tackle one of healthcare’s biggest challenges: providing effective and accessible mental health care.

According to Sword, nearly 1 billion people worldwide live with a mental health condition, yet care is still fragmented, reactive, and hard to access. In the U.S. alone, over 60 million adults experienced mental illness last year, but most did not receive meaningful treatment. Despite the growing number of available mental health solutions, access remains limited, usage is low, and outcomes are not improving.

Sword believes that the current model of therapy—based on 40-minute sessions spaced weeks apart—fails to reflect the continuous nature of mental health struggles.

This approach often misses the daily life factors that influence wellbeing, such as sleep, stress, relationships, and environment. To address this, Mind introduces a 24/7 care model that blends AI capabilities with support from Ph.D.-level clinicians.

Mind is powered by three core innovations: Phoenix, an AI care agent tailored for mental health support; M-band, a proprietary wearable that tracks environmental and physiological signals to detect early signs of anxiety and depression; and Mind clinicians, licensed mental health professionals who work closely with Phoenix to provide daily, personalised human care.

About Sword Health

Founded in 2015, Sword Health is transforming healthcare with its AI-first care platform, aiming to make high-quality healthcare accessible anytime, anywhere, while cutting costs for employers, insurers, and health systems.