As a longtime peer support counselor Michiel Rauws decided to start X2 AI - a company providing mental health support through conversations with an AI Chatbot. Over 19,000,000 people have paid access to the service, and thousands of employers. Five thousand counselors can take over the conversation at any time, or provide therapy sessions.

The Chopra Foundation partnered with X2 AI to create Piwi, a custom mental health chatbot designed for suicide awareness week (www.x2ai.com/piwi). Piwi was able to provide mental health support chats to 75,000 people, while exchanging over 6,000,000 messages, and de-escalating 2,800 suicidal crisis situations.

X2 has customers in four verticals: 1. Employers / EAPs 2. Healthcare Systems / Payers 3. Higher Education 4. Non profits - and work with companies such as Johns Hopkins Medical, Coca-Cola, AARP Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield, County of Monterey, and NorthWestern University.

A total of 7 studies have already been published by Stanford, Northwestern, and Duke University proving the efficacy of the service. Randomized controlled trials found the automated chat service to decrease symptoms by as much as 18% for Anxiety (GAD-8), and 28% for depression (PHQ-9). Moreover, X2 AI was awarded over $1,200,000 in grant funding from NIH, NIMH, PCORI, and the likes to support 13 additional ongoing studies.