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BetterUp Acquires Leading Emotion AI and People  Technology Companies To Accelerate Growth

September 17, 2021 - 4 min read

The Mental Fitness and Coaching Company Acquires Motive and Impraise, Grows Team To Over 400, and Acquires Third Office in Europe

SAN FRANCISCO – Sept. 17, 2021 – BetterUp, the inventor of virtual coaching and global leader in whole person transformation for the enterprise, has acquired two advanced technology software companies, Motive and Impraise. The merging of the companies and their teams will further enable BetterUp to harness the powerful combination of technology and human insight to help people maximize their potential.

The acquisitions come shortly after BetterUp reached one million individual coaching sessions, passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, and announced its official expansion to Europe with offices in Munich and London. Over the past eight years, BetterUp has built the largest data set related to human behavior and growth. With its proprietary AI, BetterUp’s behavioral insights inform the company’s approach to coaching its members, which propels individual transformation and organizational growth. 

“We are truly honored and excited to welcome Motive and Impraise to BetterUp,” said Alexi Robichaux, CEO and co-founder of BetterUp. “Their world-class teams have decades of experience developing breakthrough artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, and building impactful products with consumer-grade user experiences. Motive brings a wealth of expertise in creating technology that enriches the understanding of human emotion at scale, and Impraise has been relentlessly committed to cultivating environments for people to do their best work through intuitive technology. We couldn’t be more proud to bring these teams on board and to take our member and partner experiences to even greater heights.”

Impraise and Motive previously supported a wide range of customers globally, including Skyscanner, eBay, Achmea, Sony, and CERN, some of which will enter BetterUp’s roster of over 380 enterprise partners and be given access to BetterUp’s evidence-based solutions. 

San Francisco-based Motive surfaces precise, meaningful, and actionable insights about people's experiences by applying machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to multi-channel data. Motive's proprietary technology, including a first-of-its-kind Emotion API that identifies emotions in language, allows organizations to attain empathy at scale, describing their employee and customer experiences from a human perspective. Motive's expertise in these fields of artificial intelligence will rapidly contribute to the work BetterUp does in helping people, teams, and companies improve performance, well-being, and self-actualization.

Impraise brings a proven track record in building software that helps managers better understand and grow their people. Their data and analysis-driven approach to creating engaged, high-performing teams will accelerate the company’s efforts to scale in EMEA and create a strong foundation of regional expertise. The team will bolster BetterUp’s research and development capabilities, help customize the BetterUp offering to the European market, and accelerate the company’s product roadmap to deliver precision development at scale.

With Impraise being based in Amsterdam, BetterUp is acquiring a third outpost in Europe, just two months after officially launching offices in Munich and London. 

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About BetterUp

Founded in 2013, BetterUp is the inventor of virtual professional coaching, and the global leader in 1:1 and group coaching, counseling, and mentorship at scale. BetterUp combines world-class coaching with AI technology and behavioral science to deliver personalized behavior change and improve the well-being, adaptability, and effectiveness of the workforce. With the world’s largest network of over 2,500 coaches, BetterUp offers coaching in 46 languages across over 90 countries, along with interactive professional development content, analytics and real-time insights to track employee progress. Used by more than 380 companies, including leading Fortune 1,000 companies, BetterUp drives transformational and lasting behavior change, resulting in improved business outcomes across organizations and inspiring professionals everywhere to pursue their lives with greater clarity, purpose, and passion. Investors include ICONIQ Growth, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Threshold Ventures, Plus Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Mubadala Capital, Freestyle Capital, Crosslink Capital, Tenaya Capital. BetterUp’s Science Board is composed of leading researchers in the fields of positive psychology and human performance including Martin Seligman, Adam Grant, Shawn Achor, and Quinetta Roberson. BetterUp has been recognized in the Inc. 5000, Fortune’s Great Places to Work, and People Magazine’s Companies that Care. To learn more, visit www.betterup.com.

Published September 17, 2021

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