What happened to Woebot — and what to try instead
Woebot shut down its consumer app in 2025 and Pi has faded. Where people who liked calm, non-clinical AI support are going now — and what to look for.
The short version
Woebot, the friendly CBT chatbot that introduced millions of people to the idea of talking to software about their day, shut down its consumer app on June 30, 2025. The company had spent years and over a hundred million dollars trying to navigate FDA regulation for a clinical product, and ultimately pivoted to selling technology to health systems instead of to people.
Pi, the warm conversational companion from Inflection AI, is technically still online but effectively abandoned: Microsoft hired away its founders and most of its team in 2024, and the product has been in maintenance mode since. For the roughly million people who liked Pi precisely because it was kind, patient, and not trying to be a clinic, that loss was quieter but just as real.
Why the clinical route proved so hard
Woebot’s founder was candid about the lesson: AI was moving faster than regulators could evaluate it, and a consumer product built on clinical claims ends up owned by its regulatory strategy rather than its users. Meanwhile, states began legislating — Illinois now restricts marketing AI as "therapy" outright, and other states have followed with their own rules. The era of casually calling a chatbot a therapist is over, and honestly, it should be.
The practical consequence: the products that survive this category are the ones whose promises match what software can actually deliver — support, reflection, structure, availability — without borrowing the vocabulary of medicine.
What to look for in a replacement
If you are choosing what to try next, four questions separate the trustworthy options from the rest. First: is it honest about not being therapy, or does it wink at the therapist label? Second: what happens to your words — are they sold, used for advertising, or fed into training, and can you delete them? Third: does it have a real safety layer that steps out of character and points to crisis resources when the conversation turns serious? Fourth: is the business model subscriptions you can cancel, or attention it needs to keep?
Ask those four questions of anything you are considering — including Haven. Replika, for instance, has been fined under European privacy law; engagement-driven companion apps are under regulatory scrutiny for good reason.
Where Haven fits
Haven sits deliberately in the honest lane: a private space for AI-guided reflection, with original guide styles, text and voice, a safety layer that always wins, and no ads, trackers, streaks, or engagement mechanics. It does not diagnose, treat, or pretend to be a clinician — and it says so on every page where it matters.
If what you valued in Woebot was the structure, or in Pi the patience, that combination is what we set out to build. There is a free trial with no card, and an honest account of the boundaries on our "Haven vs. therapy" page — because if what you actually need is treatment, the right answer is a professional, not a different app.