OpenUp, a Netherlands based employee mental health platform, has secured a €20 million investment from Smartfin and Rubio Impact Ventures.
The funding arrives on March 26, 2026, as the company formally announces its plans to scale across Europe. For anyone building or running teams right now, this is a concrete signal that structured employee mental health platform support is moving from optional to expected.
The numbers behind this raise are grounded in a real problem. Close to 30% of EU employees, roughly 60 million people, currently experience stress, depression, or anxiety. In the Netherlands alone, more than 1.6 million employees show symptoms linked to burnout. OpenUp was built to address exactly this gap.
Scale and Reach Already Built:
OpenUp launched in 2020 and has since grown to serve more than 2,000 companies, including Rabobank, Decathlon, and PwC. Today, 600,000 employees and their families across five countries have access to the platform. The countries currently covered are the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium.
The platform connects employees with over 250 licensed professionals across three areas: mental health psychologists, physical health coaches covering sleep and nutrition, and financial advisors. Sessions are available in 35+ languages, which matters significantly for multinational teams operating across Europe.
How the Platform Works:
OpenUp is built around direct access with no waiting lists. Employees can book confidential one to one sessions with psychologists, lifestyle coaches, or financial experts online. The platform also offers group workshops, webinars, and self paced digital courses.
For HR teams, OpenUp provides real time dashboards to track well-being and usage across their organization. This makes it easier to track engagement and justify the spend internally. The platform is also ISO 27001 and NEN 7510 certified, which addresses data security concerns that often slow down procurement in regulated industries.
Why This Funding Round Matters:
Smartfin manages over €600 million in assets and focuses on B2B technology companies across Europe. Rubio Impact Ventures, which had already invested in OpenUp in earlier stages, manages €220 million across three impact funds. Rubio ties 100% of its remuneration to independently verified impact outcomes, not just financial returns.
Jürgen Ingels, founder of Smartfin, pointed to OpenUp’s combination of human connection and technology as the core reason for backing the company. Rubio partner Ilonka Jankovich described the investment as a step toward establishing OpenUp as the European standard for workplace mental health support. Both investors are aligned on scaling the model, potentially including acquisitions across the continent.
The Broader Market Shift:
Gijs Coppens, registered psychologist and founder of OpenUp, has been consistent in framing the product not as a wellness perk but as a structured complement to mainstream HealthCare. Public mental health systems across Europe carry long waiting times, and employers are increasingly filling that gap directly.
Coppens also flagged the role that AI and geopolitical uncertainty are playing in increasing pressure on employees. The platform’s response is proactive, offering support before problems escalate into absenteeism or attrition. This positions OpenUp directly as an alternative for companies that want to go beyond traditional Employee Assistance Programmes, which have historically focused on crisis response rather than everyday prevention.
For founders and operators building companies with European teams, this type of structured workplace mental well-being infrastructure is worth understanding. The regulatory environment is also shifting, with policymakers across the EU pushing toward a formal employer duty of care in mental health.
What This Means for Operators:
OpenUp’s model is subscription based, with organizations paying for access on behalf of their employees. The pricing structure means employees use it at no personal cost, which removes one of the biggest barriers to uptake. The anonymity built into the platform is another factor that drives higher engagement compared to traditional HR referral models.
Companies already thinking about employee retention and absenteeism reduction will find this category of mental health support for employees increasingly central to their people strategy. OpenUp’s trajectory, from a 2020 launch to 600,000 users and a €20 million raise in 2026, shows how quickly enterprise adoption can move when the product solves a real operational problem.
