Sonia: AI Therapy | Y Combinator

AI Therapy

Our goal is to build a safe AI therapist clinically as effective as the 99th percentile human therapist and to make mental health support accessible to anyone. Founded by a team of MIT researchers who published 9 papers on AI at conferences like NeurIPS.

Active Founders

Chris Aeberli

Founder

Learned to code at ETH Zurich & MIT. Learned to speak and make slides at McKinsey. Also used to play poker professionally, but zero-sum games are pointless so now building an AI to make people happier. Originally from Switzerland :)

Chris Aeberli

Founder

Learned to code at ETH Zurich & MIT. Learned to speak and make slides at McKinsey. Also used to play poker professionally, but zero-sum games are pointless so now building an AI to make people happier. Originally from Switzerland :)

Dustin Klebe

Founder

I graduated from ETH Zurich with a degree in Computer Science and conducted AI research at MIT in Boston. Previously, I worked as the first ML engineer at the Series B educational tech startup Knowunity and served as president of the German Excellence Scholarship KAS.

Dustin Klebe

Founder

I graduated from ETH Zurich with a degree in Computer Science and conducted AI research at MIT in Boston. Previously, I worked as the first ML engineer at the Series B educational tech startup Knowunity and served as president of the German Excellence Scholarship KAS.

Lukas Wolf

Founder

I studied CS at ETH and MIT spending most of my time on research in AI and NLP. Worked in research labs (ETH, MIT), at corps (BMW), and startups.

Lukas Wolf

Founder

I studied CS at ETH and MIT spending most of my time on research in AI and NLP. Worked in research labs (ETH, MIT), at corps (BMW), and startups.

Company Launches

🧠 Sonia - AI mental health therapy

See original launch post

Sonia is an AI mental health therapist that conducts entire therapy sessions both by voice and text via a phone app. Whether you’re looking for structured cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or short 5-minute sessions to get something off your chest, Sonia is here to support you on your mental well-being journey.

Download our iOS App 🤍

3 Friends from Switzerland 🇨🇭

Hi there :) We’re Dustin, Lukas, and Chris. We did undergrad together in Zurich, Switzerland before moving to the US to do our grad studies and research on AI at MIT, publishing several peer-reviewed papers on LLMs. One night on campus when the three of us were brainstorming startup ideas together, we agreed that in order to increase our chances of success and stay mentally sharp, we should all attend weekly therapy sessions. Not being patient enough to wait until we’d receive funding and could afford it, we built the very first version of Sonia over the weekend. We then quickly realized that it was not just the 3 of us who needed an affordable therapy solution and we haven’t looked back since.

70 Million Americans are Suffering

More than 20% of the population struggles with their mental health each year. However, with long waitlists and high bills, therapy is inaccessible for most. Our goal is to make mental health care available anytime, anywhere and for anyone. When a crisis hits at 2am, you shouldn’t have to wait for months and pay hundreds of dollars to talk to someone and receive support. With Sonia, you can get started immediately for a fraction of the cost.

Text and Voice-based Therapy Sessions

On our app, you can choose between several types of interventions, including entire cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) sessions lasting 30 minutes. For other days when you just need to get something off your chest, such as after a tough meeting or an argument with loved ones, we’ve also built a short format session for emotional relief. Lay down your phone, close your eyes, and fully focus on your thoughts and emotions - Sonia automatically detects when you speak, pause, or interrupt.