‘Out of Breaking Points Comes Opportunity’: Israel Maps Mental Health Tech Boom
After October 7, Israel sees a mental health tech boom: 117 startups tackling trauma, resilience with AI, self-care, and automation. Collaboration, funding, and policy changes are crucial to accelerate healing, say experts.
Israel has faced an overwhelming mental health crisis since the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023. The emotional toll has been profound—but in true Israeli spirit, tragedy has sparked innovation.
A surge of mental health startups has emerged, driven by necessity and resilience. The country’s mental health technology sector is now growing rapidly.
This emerging ecosystem has been mapped for the first time. Earlier this month, Startup Nation Central, in partnership with the iCAR organization and Bezyl, released Israel’s first-ever mental health field landscape map for 2025.
The map showcases technologies that help people cope with trauma, strengthen personal and social resilience, and increase access to mental health care. According to the organizations involved, the goal is to help companies develop scalable, research-based solutions for trauma rehabilitation.
Out of our deepest breaking points comes the opportunity to redefine how we train, diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate our community
“Out of our deepest breaking points comes the opportunity to redefine how we train, diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate our community,” said Dr. Alona Barnea, head of the government’s Neurotechnology Research, Science & Technology Unit. “Our unique experience with resilience allows us not only to endure but to build upon it—transforming challenges into new pathways for recovery and strength.”
Another key vision behind the initiative is to bring greater coordination to the mental health space.
They need to collaborate in a whole new way because we realize this is bigger than any of us
“We have a fragmented ecosystem,” explained iCAR Co-Founder Gila Tolub. She said Israel’s health funds, government services, hospitals, NGOs, philanthropists, and tech companies are all investing in mental health. However, “they need to collaborate in a whole new way because we realize this is bigger than any of us, and the only way to move forward is by working together.”
According to the map, 117 active tech companies in Israel are currently focused on mental health, up from 27 seven years ago. The field began expanding as early as 2018, and even before October 7, momentum was building, according to Startup Nation Central.
Still, last year saw the most significant growth in investor confidence and funding. Private funding rose by 66% over 2023, reaching $123 million.
Tolub told The Media Line that there are many new companies or companies newly operating in Israel. Around 85% of mental health tech startups are still in the early development stages, a much higher percentage than in the general health tech sector, where 65% are in the early stages.
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By comparison, only 60% of companies are in early development across the entire Israeli tech ecosystem.
This early-stage focus also means most of the companies are small. The report showed that the majority—65%—have 10 or fewer employees. Another 25% have between 11 and 50 employees, and just 10% have grown to more than 50.
To make the mental health tech landscape easier to understand, the team divided the sector into four categories: self-care, managed care platforms, workflow automation, and mental health research.
Self-care refers to tools that help individuals manage their mental well-being. These include biofeedback devices, peer-support apps, and AI-guided therapy platforms that offer structure and coping tools.
One example is Dugri, a digital platform that provides structured, anonymous peer support. It’s been widely used in Israel, especially among soldiers and their families, to help process trauma through guided conversations.
“By placing support directly in the hands of users, these technologies offer accessible, stigma-free, and immediate relief,” the report noted.
Managed care platforms connect patients and therapists through digital or hybrid models. These might include telehealth services or AI-powered tools to assist in treatment delivery.
In this space, Kai.ai stands out. It’s an AI-based mental health platform rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology. The company works with Israeli universities to support thousands of reservists. Another company, GrayMatters Health, uses brain-computer interface tech to help people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) regulate brain activity by targeting biomarkers linked to the amygdala.
Workflow automation tools aim to ease clinicians’ administrative load, allowing them to focus more on therapy and less on paperwork. This is especially important in Israel, where the mental health system has long been underfunded. According to the Health Ministry, there is only one public-sector psychiatrist for every 11,705 people.
“Automation tools help streamline services, reducing wait times and allowing clinicians to focus on treatment rather than administration,” the report explained. “AI-driven automation solutions also ensure that individuals in crisis receive timely interventions, making the system more efficient and effective.”
One company leading this area is Eleos Health. Its AI platform automatically captures key moments in therapy sessions and generates clinical documentation, streamlining workflows and helping therapists reduce symptoms faster. Eleos is among the most advanced mental health startups in Israel. According to Startup Nation Central, it has raised $128 million to date, including $60 million in a Series C round in January 2025.
Mental health research is the final category. This field focuses on early diagnosis, personalized psychiatry, and machine learning tools that improve diagnosis accuracy, predict patient response to treatment, and tailor care to the individual.
One company in this space is NeuroKaire, which uses patients’ blood cells to create brain models. These lab-grown neurons allow medications to be tested outside the body, offering a faster, more precise way to treat PTSD, depression, and anxiety.
Tolub said the idea for iCAR—Israel Collective Action for Resilience—came after the war when it became clear that trauma care in Israel was fragmented. Even patients struggling to find help didn’t know where to turn.
Beyond that, Israel still lacks national protocols for mental health or trauma healing. And today, with nearly 10 million people affected by some form of trauma simply by living through October 7 and the ongoing seven-front war, iCAR saw an urgent need to accelerate recovery efforts. Tolub said the organization is helping connect NGOs, universities, philanthropists, and other players to move things forward.
“We built a scientific advisory board with various experts from universities, health funds, etc., and we asked them if they had $100 million where they would put it—and then identified eight areas that could disproportionately accelerate healing from October 7,” Tolub said. “We identified interventions with high societal returns on investment.”
One of those areas is advancing technological initiatives in mental health.
Startup Nation Central echoed that vision, saying there is “significant expansion potential for Israel’s mental health ecosystem—particularly in trauma care and resilience-building for broader communities.”
The report stated: “Israel’s mental health crisis calls for coordinated, immediate action to leverage technological innovation in this sector. Several pivotal steps are required to grow the field and harness existing knowledge and innovation: firstly, expanding digital treatment options by integrating AI and automation solutions into legislation and national health policy; concurrently, intensifying public information campaigns and trauma awareness through digital psychoeducational programs and community initiatives; focusing on early detection of mental health trends through data analytics to prevent crises from escalating; increasing investment in both established and emerging startups to support research, development, and widespread adoption of existing solutions; and finally, promoting international collaborations, drawing on Israel’s expertise in trauma care to assist global communities grappling with wars, disasters, and mass-casualty events.”
Tolub stressed, “We do not have a choice. We will need technology to help all the people who need help.”
The world is looking at Israel as a petri dish for mental health
She added, “The world is looking at Israel as a petri dish for mental health. I think Israel didn’t become a leader in defense technology or cybersecurity out of pure luck. Necessity is the mother of innovation, and I think mental health technology is the next big thing.”
