Employer-focused digital mental health company LifeSpeak announced its plans to buy wellness platform Wellbeats for a whopping $92.5 million. 

This news comes roughly a year and a half after LifeSpeak scored $42 million in equity investment. 

Wellbeats is focused on providing virtual fitness, nutrition and mindfulness courses to its members. The service is able to personalize its recommendations for each user based on their interest, goals and abilities.

Like LifeSpeak, the company works with employers and their HR teams to provide its services to their workforce. Additionally Wellbeat's clients include health plans, insurers, brokers and consultants.

WHY IT MATTERS 

LifeSpeak outlined a number of assets that the acquisition will bring to the table, starting with Wellbeat's SaaS-based technology platform, and a new team with "complementary skillsets." 

The Toronto-based company noted that Wellbeat's 400-plus enterprise clients will help expand its client base and geographical diversity. 

"The acquisition of Wellbeats significantly expands and diversifies the SaaS-based behavioral health and physical wellbeing solutions LifeSpeak can offer its customers and partners. Wellbeats brings an exceptional on-demand wellbeing platform to millions of users worldwide and provides us with additional growth opportunities via channel partners," Michael Held, CEO of LifeSpeak, said in a statement.

“Many organizations have expressed a strong desire to streamline their wellbeing support to a smaller number of proven brands focusing on longer-term, preventive solutions. This makes the addition of Wellbeats highly complementary to LifeSpeak’s growing lineup of digital health offerings and allows us to further extend our offering to new enterprise and embedded-solutions clients."

THE LARGER TREND

The employee wellness space is quickly growing. Investors and businesses have taken note. In February 2021, Modern Health, a startup that works with employer-customers to provide an app based package of mental health benefits, scored $74 million in funding. 

Just last month Lyra Health, an employer-focused digital mental health provider, announced a $235 million Series F funding round as well as the acquisition of employee-assistant program ICAS World for an undisclosed sum. This infusion of cash brought the company's total raise to $900 million. 

The space is also seeing an uptick in M&As. For example, virtual employee mental wellness company Ginger merged with meditation app Healthspace in a deal that reportedly values the combined entity at $3 billion.