Elin.ai is a mobile app that acts like a ‘cognitive antivirus’ – it keeps an eye on the user’s online experience and analyzes the content they consume or produce. Elin.ai has a long-term memory, gradually learns about the user’s world and improves their personality model. Thanks to this, the app also allows users to get to know themselves and their identity better.
Elin.ai uses AI (Large Language Models) to deliver accurate and personalized psychological response to screenshots provided by Gen Z users. In the form of a chat, the app then helps them understand and cope with the content by providing useful context, advice, or interventions to protect their mental wellbeing.
30 to 40% of US and EU teenagers suffer from depression or chronic anxiety because of social media. At the same time, there’s a critical global shortage of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic care for children and youth. This is illustrated by a number of studies, including the recent extensive research by Prof. Jonathan Haidt.
Elin.ai goes far beyond general anti-anxiety strategies, such as breathing exercises or meditation. It helps with user’s specific problems, in real time. The app protects teens and young adults from getting trapped in toxic thought and emotional patterns that can be caused by harmful, manipulative, or extreme content and intentionally distorted information.
Moreover, Elin.ai has tremendous potential to positively impact broader societal issues. Indeed, people with diminished mental health often experience anxiety, helplessness, and loss of control; as a result, they seek ways to compensate. Research studies show that these compensatory control mechanisms – such as extremism, radicalization, simplistic worldviews, rigid thinking, or conspiracy theories – lead to polarization of society, making it even harder to find common ground and address global challenges like climate change, poverty, migration, gender inequality, and others.
Hence, prioritizing Gen Z’s mental wellness is crucial not only to help them cope with the dark side of their digital lives, but also to improve the overall social and political climate.
Market
Prospective market for the app includes 259 million Gen Z social media users in the US, Canada, EU, and LatAm. Globally, Gen Z will soon make up around 20% of the spending power (source: Statista, Exploding Topics). At the same time, 30 to 40% of teenagers in the US and EU suffer from depression or chronic anxiety as a result of social media. In recent years, teen and adolescent mental health has deteriorated rapidly. According to a McKinsey Health Institute study, 20% of European Gen Z respondents report poor or very poor mental health. The Czech National Institute of Mental Health reports that 40% of ninth-graders suffer from depression and 30% show signs of anxiety. Yet the topic of mental and digital health is not taboo for Generation Z. Research by Behavio and DMFG reports that 96% of Gen Z respondents rank mental wellbeing as one of their top priorities – while also one of their least fulfilled needs.
“I am struck by the huge discrepancy between the number of parents who are afraid to let their kids play outside by themselves, even though they are naturally very well equipped to handle that – yet, at the same time, leave their children completely on their own in the online world where we actually have no evolutionarily adapted defense mechanisms at all. On top of that, both us and our kids are constantly bombarded by super-optimized algorithms that aim to maximize our screen time and click-through rate.”
“With the help of our core Gen Z community, we’ve completed the Elin.ai web app trials. Approximately 500 users have access to the app. Within the scope of the current pre-seed phase, we plan to make the native mobile app fully available, targeting a minimum of 5,000 active users. The second tranche of our pre-seed round will focus on foreign market research” says Jan Romportl, Elin.ai, CEO & Co-Founder.
“For Presto, Elin.ai is a very exceptional investment. For three main reasons: First, because it’s in the B2C user app category, which we don’t usually focus on. Second, because Jan Romportl, a renowned AI and deeptech expert, has been working with us for years. That’s why we didn’t hesitate when Jan approached us with his project, especially in such an impactful sector. And thirdly, Elin.ai is the only startup from our 60-strong portfolio that we backed in the so-called ‘idea stage’. We have full confidence in the founding team and their mission” says Premysl Rubes from Presto Ventures.
