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Investment
We’re excited to welcome Robyn AI, founded by Jenny Shao. Fresh off the close of their seed round led by M13, Robyn has raised $5.5M to build emotionally intelligent AI that empowers self-discovery and connection. The round includes worldclass investors like Lars Rasmussen (cofounder of Google Maps), Bill Tai (seed investor in Canva), Ken Goldman (former CFO of Yahoo), and Christian Szegedy (cofounder of X.ai).
Why we’re excited about Robyn AI
Our digital world has failed the human one. As M13 partner Latif Peracha points out, digital interaction today is deeply broken. The tech that promised to connect us now drives us further apart and makes us more isolated than ever before. The global pandemic didn’t help matters, and three years later, 1 in 2 adults in America report experiencing loneliness. And Gen Z is a large group being hit particularly hard with loneliness. Some 73% of Gen Zers say they feel alone “sometimes or always.” Robyn is stepping in where traditional tech has fallen short–starting with the Gen Z users who need it most.
AI has transformed how we search, code, and communicate — but it still fails at one of the most fundamental human needs: emotional connection. That’s where Robyn AI comes in. Robyn isn’t just building another chatbot or digital companion. Jenny and her team are creating something far more powerful: a deeply personal AI that helps people feel seen, understood, and emotionally connected — starting with themselves.
The first product? Imagine if Jarvis from Iron Man and Samantha from Her had a child — intuitive, intelligent, emotionally attuned. That’s Robyn.
“We’re not here to replace human connection,” says Shao. “We’re building the trust and empathy layer of AI — something that can guide, support, and reflect back your own emotional world, with intelligence and care.”
Still in beta, Robyn is already live on six continents and in the hands of over 2,000 users — from Gen Z students to elite athletes. And it’s already making waves.
“People have shared that Robyn helped them navigate a breakup, land a new job, or find clarity about who they are,” Shao says. “That’s the kind of real impact we’re after — not just productivity, but presence.”
“We’re on a mission to build a more emotionally connected world. AI is just a tool to achieve that more meaningful reality,” says Shao. As she points out, “this goes beyond a tech play–we’re not building AI for 'xyz' because we can, everything we build is motivated by a deep understanding and care of the humans using it, gained from 7 years of taking care of people at their most vulnerable. I’m building this for younger Jenny, for the thousands of patients who told me they didn’t want to do this alone, and for the almost 8 billion people who share a collective, fundamental need to connect as human beings.”
Anytime you need a friend
Loneliness isn’t just an issue for the elderly — it’s become a defining feature of modern life, especially for Gen Z. “It used to be easier,” says Shao. “You had time, shared spaces, and people to talk to. Now, even surrounded by others, many people have no idea how to actually connect.”
It’s easy to blame phones or social media, but Shao argues the problem runs deeper. “This generation inherited a chaotic, high-pressure world,” she says. “Even on a college campus with thousands of people, it can feel impossible to genuinely connect — everyone’s in their own bubble.”
Remote work hasn’t helped either. “You might clock in, but where do you actually find connection?” she asks. “Real relationships require shared values, emotional understanding, and time — all things that are in short supply.”
That’s where Robyn comes in. By getting to know you: your personality, your emotional patterns, your goals, it’s able to help you navigate your inner world so you can connect with people who truly align with you.
“We’re taking the friction out of forming real, lasting relationships,” Shao says. “Robyn doesn’t just talk to you — it helps you understand yourself and build bonds that actually stick.”
Origin story
Before founding Robyn AI, Shao was on a path to becoming a surgeon. She had always wanted to be a doctor — that calling began when she was just eight years old, after losing her great-grandmother, Tai-Tai, to lung cancer.
“She was my superhero,” Shao says. “Losing her so young made me want to be there for other families going through hard things — to help them feel less alone.”
Shao went on to attend one of the most competitive medical programs in the country: the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, where she was one of 32 students selected from over 3,000 applicants. During her five years there, she authored 65 research publications and trained at the intersection of clinical care and neuroscience.
In 2021, she began surgical residency at Mount Sinai in New York, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. What she witnessed there shifted everything.
“I saw my patients denied care by insurance companies,” she says. “The system wasn’t built for them — it was built to protect profits. And it wasn’t just the medical side. People were isolated, scared, and deeply disconnected. No one was solving for that.”
In 2023, Shao was invited to continue her residency at Harvard. But after eight months, she made the rare and radical decision to walk away — not because she lost faith in medicine, but because she saw a deeper problem no one was addressing: the erosion of human connection.
“Leaving medicine was the hardest decision of my life,” Shao says. “But I realized the system wasn’t going to change from within. I wanted to build something from the ground up that could actually help people feel seen, supported, and emotionally understood.”
That was the beginning of Robyn AI — a bold reimagining of how AI can support self-understanding and real human connection in a disconnected world.
“Who Leaves Harvard?” Starting Robyn AI
When Shao made the decision to leave her surgical residency at Harvard to build a startup, the reactions were immediate — and unforgettable.
“People thought I was out of my mind,” Shao laughs. “I was told I’d end up broke, living under a bridge. One person literally said, ‘Who leaves Harvard? This will be the worst mistake of your life.!’”
But Shao had already mastered the art of doing the impossible. “I figured — if I could learn how to keep a heart beating, I could figure out how to build a company,” she says.
She found inspiration in other unlikely founders, like Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, who Shao looks up to as a role model and someone also came from non-technical roots, but saw how technology could help people express themselves through design and built a world changing company in the process.
Within months, Shao assembled a small, mission-driven team and built the first working prototype of Robyn and snagged an impressive list of heavy hitters. These include one of her first investors Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps; Justin Su’a, performance advisor to elite athletes; Christian Szegedy, AI researcher and co-founder of xAI; and angel investor Bill Tai, who has backed companies like Canva, Dapper Labs and Lineage Logistics.
A key moment for Shao was when she was introduced to Latif Peracha, senior partner at M13, who led Robyn’s most recent seed round after a deep dive into the product, tech stack, and user feedback. Peracha recognized the unique tech stack that Shao was building, including a learning system that allows Robyn to more quickly contextualize the inputs coming from the user, as well as personalize them and turn the voice much faster.
He spoke to elite athletes using Robyn and heard a surprising theme: they felt more comfortable talking to Robyn about anxiety, burnout, and self-doubt than they did with their own team therapists.
“That’s what got me,” Peracha said. “It shows that this fits the thesis amazingly well. Plus, Jenny has this very strong passion and desire to build something that’s going to be world-changing.”
It’s one thing to build a tool. It’s another to build trust. Robyn is doing both — and reshaping how we connect along the way. And they’re just getting started.
Read more about Jenny Shao
- NYSE Wired present the East Coast AI Leaders Executive Series
- How Robin Health is Bringing AI Mental Health Counseling
- Prioritizing Mental Wellness in Medicine with Dr. Jenny Shao
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-shao-md-5a34b437/
Follow RobynAI
Investment
We’re excited to welcome Robyn AI, founded by Jenny Shao. Fresh off the close of their seed round led by M13, Robyn has raised $5.5M to build emotionally intelligent AI that empowers self-discovery and connection. The round includes worldclass investors like Lars Rasmussen (cofounder of Google Maps), Bill Tai (seed investor in Canva), Ken Goldman (former CFO of Yahoo), and Christian Szegedy (cofounder of X.ai).
Why we’re excited about Robyn AI
Our digital world has failed the human one. As M13 partner Latif Peracha points out, digital interaction today is deeply broken. The tech that promised to connect us now drives us further apart and makes us more isolated than ever before. The global pandemic didn’t help matters, and three years later, 1 in 2 adults in America report experiencing loneliness. And Gen Z is a large group being hit particularly hard with loneliness. Some 73% of Gen Zers say they feel alone “sometimes or always.” Robyn is stepping in where traditional tech has fallen short–starting with the Gen Z users who need it most.
AI has transformed how we search, code, and communicate — but it still fails at one of the most fundamental human needs: emotional connection. That’s where Robyn AI comes in. Robyn isn’t just building another chatbot or digital companion. Jenny and her team are creating something far more powerful: a deeply personal AI that helps people feel seen, understood, and emotionally connected — starting with themselves.
The first product? Imagine if Jarvis from Iron Man and Samantha from Her had a child — intuitive, intelligent, emotionally attuned. That’s Robyn.
“We’re not here to replace human connection,” says Shao. “We’re building the trust and empathy layer of AI — something that can guide, support, and reflect back your own emotional world, with intelligence and care.”
Still in beta, Robyn is already live on six continents and in the hands of over 2,000 users — from Gen Z students to elite athletes. And it’s already making waves.
“People have shared that Robyn helped them navigate a breakup, land a new job, or find clarity about who they are,” Shao says. “That’s the kind of real impact we’re after — not just productivity, but presence.”
“We’re on a mission to build a more emotionally connected world. AI is just a tool to achieve that more meaningful reality,” says Shao. As she points out, “this goes beyond a tech play–we’re not building AI for 'xyz' because we can, everything we build is motivated by a deep understanding and care of the humans using it, gained from 7 years of taking care of people at their most vulnerable. I’m building this for younger Jenny, for the thousands of patients who told me they didn’t want to do this alone, and for the almost 8 billion people who share a collective, fundamental need to connect as human beings.”
Anytime you need a friend
Loneliness isn’t just an issue for the elderly — it’s become a defining feature of modern life, especially for Gen Z. “It used to be easier,” says Shao. “You had time, shared spaces, and people to talk to. Now, even surrounded by others, many people have no idea how to actually connect.”
It’s easy to blame phones or social media, but Shao argues the problem runs deeper. “This generation inherited a chaotic, high-pressure world,” she says. “Even on a college campus with thousands of people, it can feel impossible to genuinely connect — everyone’s in their own bubble.”
Remote work hasn’t helped either. “You might clock in, but where do you actually find connection?” she asks. “Real relationships require shared values, emotional understanding, and time — all things that are in short supply.”
That’s where Robyn comes in. By getting to know you: your personality, your emotional patterns, your goals, it’s able to help you navigate your inner world so you can connect with people who truly align with you.
“We’re taking the friction out of forming real, lasting relationships,” Shao says. “Robyn doesn’t just talk to you — it helps you understand yourself and build bonds that actually stick.”
Origin story
Before founding Robyn AI, Shao was on a path to becoming a surgeon. She had always wanted to be a doctor — that calling began when she was just eight years old, after losing her great-grandmother, Tai-Tai, to lung cancer.
“She was my superhero,” Shao says. “Losing her so young made me want to be there for other families going through hard things — to help them feel less alone.”
Shao went on to attend one of the most competitive medical programs in the country: the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, where she was one of 32 students selected from over 3,000 applicants. During her five years there, she authored 65 research publications and trained at the intersection of clinical care and neuroscience.
In 2021, she began surgical residency at Mount Sinai in New York, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. What she witnessed there shifted everything.
“I saw my patients denied care by insurance companies,” she says. “The system wasn’t built for them — it was built to protect profits. And it wasn’t just the medical side. People were isolated, scared, and deeply disconnected. No one was solving for that.”
In 2023, Shao was invited to continue her residency at Harvard. But after eight months, she made the rare and radical decision to walk away — not because she lost faith in medicine, but because she saw a deeper problem no one was addressing: the erosion of human connection.
“Leaving medicine was the hardest decision of my life,” Shao says. “But I realized the system wasn’t going to change from within. I wanted to build something from the ground up that could actually help people feel seen, supported, and emotionally understood.”
That was the beginning of Robyn AI — a bold reimagining of how AI can support self-understanding and real human connection in a disconnected world.
“Who Leaves Harvard?” Starting Robyn AI
When Shao made the decision to leave her surgical residency at Harvard to build a startup, the reactions were immediate — and unforgettable.
“People thought I was out of my mind,” Shao laughs. “I was told I’d end up broke, living under a bridge. One person literally said, ‘Who leaves Harvard? This will be the worst mistake of your life.!’”
But Shao had already mastered the art of doing the impossible. “I figured — if I could learn how to keep a heart beating, I could figure out how to build a company,” she says.
She found inspiration in other unlikely founders, like Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, who Shao looks up to as a role model and someone also came from non-technical roots, but saw how technology could help people express themselves through design and built a world changing company in the process.
Within months, Shao assembled a small, mission-driven team and built the first working prototype of Robyn and snagged an impressive list of heavy hitters. These include one of her first investors Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps; Justin Su’a, performance advisor to elite athletes; Christian Szegedy, AI researcher and co-founder of xAI; and angel investor Bill Tai, who has backed companies like Canva, Dapper Labs and Lineage Logistics.
A key moment for Shao was when she was introduced to Latif Peracha, senior partner at M13, who led Robyn’s most recent seed round after a deep dive into the product, tech stack, and user feedback. Peracha recognized the unique tech stack that Shao was building, including a learning system that allows Robyn to more quickly contextualize the inputs coming from the user, as well as personalize them and turn the voice much faster.
He spoke to elite athletes using Robyn and heard a surprising theme: they felt more comfortable talking to Robyn about anxiety, burnout, and self-doubt than they did with their own team therapists.
“That’s what got me,” Peracha said. “It shows that this fits the thesis amazingly well. Plus, Jenny has this very strong passion and desire to build something that’s going to be world-changing.”
It’s one thing to build a tool. It’s another to build trust. Robyn is doing both — and reshaping how we connect along the way. And they’re just getting started.
Read more about Jenny Shao
- NYSE Wired present the East Coast AI Leaders Executive Series
- How Robin Health is Bringing AI Mental Health Counseling
- Prioritizing Mental Wellness in Medicine with Dr. Jenny Shao
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-shao-md-5a34b437/
Follow RobynAI
Read more
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