By Ron Gura, Co-Founder & CEO, Empathy
Everything shifts year to year. Teams change. Plans change. The world changes. And in 2025, it has often felt like those shifts are happening faster than ever. Still, one thing remains the same: life will always throw hard moments our way.
The moments themselves may look different–loss, illness, caregiving, or the need to step away from work–but they share something in common: they arrive unexpectedly and disrupt life in ways people didn’t choose, or even plan for.
What can change, and what we focus on at Empathy, is how support shows up when those moments arrive, and how effectively it helps people regain clarity, stability, and a way forward.
That belief shaped everything we did in 2025. As I reflect on the past year, the momentum that we’ve built, and importantly, the impact that we’ve had, I’m proud of the team, and energized by what lies ahead.
Scaling with purpose
This year, Empathy closed a $72M Series C, bringing total funding to $162M. We significantly expanded our client base, doubled our revenue, and scaled across more product lines and new markets. Most importantly, reinforcing the same point we keep hearing from families, employers, and partners every day: real support in moments of hardship is not a nice to have, it’s essential.
But funding and growth are not the story. They never really are. They are the enablers. They make it possible for Empathy to invest more deeply in care, expand into new markets, and advance our technology forward so we can better understand what people are facing and show up with clarity and humanity when it matters most.
More geographies, and across oceans
In 2025, Empathy expanded from serving families in the United States alone to supporting people across three countries and two continents.
Earlier this year, we officially launched in Canada and have since partnered with major Canadian insurers, including Sun Life and iA Financial Group. In the fall, we also launched the first bereavement support offering within Canadian banking through our partnership with TD Bank.
And earlier this month, Empathy also officially launched in the United Kingdom, marking our first expansion into Europe and an important milestone in our mission to bring compassionate, practical support to families globally.
Global growth in our unique category only works if you respect what makes each place different. Every legal and regulatory system is different, estate and benefits frameworks vary widely, and cultures and communities navigate hardship in their own ways. Our work requires listening first, adapting thoughtfully, and building with care.
And of course, we continued scaling our presence across the U.S. through partnerships with leading insurers, employers, and financial institutions—extending meaningful, holistic support to tens of millions of individuals who can now access this care through the institutions they trust.
Addressing more of life’s challenging moments
2025 was also the year Empathy expanded what it means to show up for people.
This year, we took a major step forward with the launch of our newest product, Empathy Leave Support, first launched in partnership with MetLife.
Leave Support represents an important evolution for Empathy. It is our first product not directly rooted in loss, and one that expands our platform into an entirely different type of insurance and claims experience. When individuals need to step away from work due to illness or other life disruptions, the challenge isn’t just time away. It is also about navigating uncertainty, fragmented processes, and a sudden loss of structure.
Leave Support is designed to guide individuals through the entire leave journey, from the moment an employee begins to consider taking a leave of absence, through recovery and return to work. By combining structured routines, adaptive guidance, smart reminders, and real human care, Empathy helps people regain confidence, stability, and a sense of control at a moment when everything can feel upended.
For employees, this means less stress, clearer navigation, and greater confidence throughout recovery. For employers and insurers, it means smoother transitions back to work, better outcomes, and a stronger foundation for wellbeing and productivity at scale.
Deepening support for loss
Within our Loss Support product, we expanded the depth and specialization of care available, informed directly by feedback from the people using Empathy and our Care Team.
In 2025, this included the addition of Pregnancy Loss Support—a type of loss that is both widely experienced and historically under-supported—designed to offer thoughtful guidance through a deeply personal moment. We also introduced Pet Loss Support, recognizing the grief that can come with losing a beloved animal companion.
Throughout 2025, Empathy’s LifeVault product continued to grow in both reach and purpose. LifeVault is rooted in a simple but powerful belief: preparing for loss is itself a form of care. Helping people organize critical information, reflect on their wishes, and have the conversations they often avoid can meaningfully ease the burden on loved ones later.
This year, LifeVault was recognized as a Design Honoree in Fast Company’s 2025 Innovation by Design Awards; we see this award as an affirmation of the care and intention required to build tools for moments people would rather not think about. And it’s working. In 2025, we increased by 6× the number of individuals who created wills and trusts through LifeVault compared to the year prior. We also launched our first set of Conversation Guides, designed to help people navigate the emotional and interpersonal realities of planning with clarity and compassion—not just checklists.
Looking ahead to 2026
If 2024 was about proving that compassionate care belongs in modern systems, then 2025 was about expanding that care—across borders, across products, and across the moments that define and challenge us all in life.
Across Empathy’s teams globally, there is a shared sense that we’re building something bigger than a company. We’re helping create a future where care is built into the institutions and systems people rely on—expected, accessible, and grounded in human dignity. A future where, even in life’s hardest moments, individuals are supported to emerge with greater resilience, confidence, and the ability to move forward.
To our partners, our growing team, and the families who place their trust in us during life’s hardest moments, thank you.
We enter 2026 with purpose, clarity, and a deep sense of responsibility.