VR meditation startup TRIPP raised $11.2M in fresh funding.
Gaming-focused investment firm BITKRAFT Ventures led the round, with support from Qualcomm, Amazon Alexa Fund, Niantic, and Mayfield.
A Whole New World
Generating immersive, psychedelic worldscapes, TRIPP offers guided visualizations, breathing exercises, and binaural audio for meditators.
Touting extended-reality (XR) wellness, its experiences are available across various platforms and devices — AR smartglasses, VR headsets, and smartphone apps.
Community. Emphasizing connection, TRIPP made two community-driven acquisitions this past year — world-building platform Eden and group meditation startup EvolVR.
Consciousness. A digital platform, TRIPP’s offerings aren’t actually psychoactive, though they’re designed to stimulate similar feelings of awe, relaxation, and mindfulness. A middle ground, its experiences are often used to prepare patients for psychedelic-assisted therapy. Doubling down, it acquired PsyAssist last year, a platform that supports VR-based psychedelic therapy.
Monkey Mind
As mental health resources become increasingly strained, many are on the hunt for new solutions.
Wholly immersive, VR meditations have proven restorative, beating out audio-only or 2D meditations in reducing stress. Now, the mindful metaverse is taking shape:
- Hoame launched its virtual meditation studio this year, available on Meta Quest.
- Alo Yoga teamed with Roblox to bring yoga, meditation, and retail to the metaverse.
- Leveraging gamification, Maloka evolves your avatar the more you meditate.
- Guided Meditation VR transports users to 100+ lush environments via Meta Quest.
Punchline: No doubt, meditation purists will point out the irony of connected mindfulness, especially as a host of new devices emerge. But—whether a gateway for new meditators or a refreshing take for veteran practitioners—VR seems a promising tool.
