December 30, 2026

Empathy Health Technologies, which designed and markets the Sober Sidekick, a peer-support addiction recovery platform, announced it raised $7.6 million to enhance its business. The company intends to use the funding to expand value-based partnerships with payers; grow teams focused on member support, behavioral data science, and care collaboration; and on enhancing the platform’s predictive capabilities. Investments also will support the buildout of operational infrastructure to deliver relapse prevention at scale, across diverse populations and health delivery models.

The round was led by HealthX Ventures. Financial contributions from others, including Nina Capital, Ikigai Healthcare Funds, American Heart Association Ventures, Suncoast Ventures, Cortado Ventures, and Wilson Sonsini Investment Company, brought the total funding to $11.4 million.

The Sober Sidekick platform has been downloaded 1.1 million times, with 145,000 active monthly users. During this time, more than 2 million peer engagements take place each month. The platform leverages its engaged community and predictive technology that includes its proprietary Empathy Algorithm, which analyzes millions of behavioral signals and language patterns to detect rising relapse risk, re-engage vulnerable members, and activate support at the exact moment it’s needed. When risk emerges, the tool triggers immediate peer response, a critical factor given that 88% of individuals who self-report relapse on the platform eventually return to re-engage with the community.

In addition to the Sober Sidekick app being publicly available for anyone to download, Empathy Health also partners with payers under value-based care models to prevent relapse and lower medical claims costs. When integrating a payer’s claims data, the company will employ a population-intelligence model that stratifies member acuity and engages individuals in ways that minimize the likelihood of relapse. By identifying real-time indicators of relapse, Sober Sidekick gets a proactive lens into member risk before costly episodes occur. Empathy Health’s predictive models now demonstrate 86% to 88% accuracy in identifying individuals likely to experience high-cost events, giving health plans a way to turn relapse prevention into a measurable outcome.

The platform’s Empathy Algorithm drives peer connection, while a “whole person” support philosophy ensures human teams can intervene when social or environmental barriers put recovery at risk. Factors like isolation, housing instability, transportation barriers, and lack of access to care contribute to recurrence. The company’s model is designed to intervene through community support and coordinated navigation and behavioral signals that reveal when deeper outreach is needed. By bridging the space between help-seeking and system response, Sober Sidekick builds continuity where traditional care often loses people.