Huffington’s Thrive Global raises $80m to tackle burnout

Burnout has reached new heights during the pandemic.

Workers across the world have struggled to switch off and disconnect from work because they are not just working from home, but actually living at work.

While technology bears a lot of responsibility for destroying employee’s work-life balance, some digital tools can help tackle stress and burnout head on.

One example is Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global, which has closed a $80 million Series C round. Bloomberg reported that this brings it valuation to $700 million.

The round was led by Kleiner Perkins and Owl Ventures. As a result, Kleiner Perkins partner Mamoon Hamid and Owl Ventures managing director Ian Chiu will join Thrive Global’s board.

In a blogpost Huffington revealed how pleased she was to welcome these new investors onto the board.

She noted that Hamid was an early investor in Slack, Yammer and Intercom, while Chiu and Owl Ventures focus more on education technology and have previously invested in Degreed and MasterClass.

Owl Venture’s “commitment to Thrive [Global] reflects their recognition that as we focus on reskilling and upskilling employees around the world, we must also empower them to build mental resilience and manage stress”, writes Huffington.

Hamid told Bloomberg that he believes that Thrive Global helps employees to rebalance “the blurring lines between work and our lives,” but he also invested because he is confident that Thrive can go public “in a few years”

The plan is to use the funding to continue to develop its science-backed approach to mental resilience, and “ending the stress and burnout epidemic and helping people live and work with greater well-being and mental resilience”, according to Huffington.

This unique approach involves so-called microsteps to building healthy habits across six pillars; Huffington explained the concept in a recent exclusive interview with UNLEASH’s CEO Marc Coleman.

In addition, Thrive Global is on a hiring spree, particularly in the product, engineering and design space to make its microstep engine even more intelligent, as well as add more to its mental resilience dashboard, which among other things helps managers see employee’s risk of burnout.

Enabling employers, and particularly HR and line managers, to be able to proactively stop employee burnout in its tracks is crucial to preventing a mass talent exodus linked with stress and wellbeing, according to a study by Monster.