startups
Regulate raises €1.4M Seed to bring science-backed breathwork into the workplace
TechEU
May 12, 2026 · 3 min listen
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Regulate raises €1.4M Seed to bring science-backed breathwork into the workplace
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Breathwork platform Regulate has closed a €1.4M Seed round. The round is led by impact investor 4impact.vc and backed by an angel syndicate, which includes: - Hanno Renner (Co-Founder & CEO, Personio), - Mike Wax (Co-Founder, Forto), - Marlena Hien (Co-Founder, Bears with Benefits), - and Felix Haas (10x Group, IDnow, Bits & Pretzels). Founded in 2024 by CEO Peter van Woerkum, a certified breathwork coach and executive coach with over a decade of C-level advisory experience, and Paul Laechelin, former Product Lead for the BMW App, Regulate was founded on the conviction that breathwork is the most direct, science-backed way to improve focus, stress response and resilience. According to van Woerkum, breathwork is a proven way to shift from stress to clarity in real time. “It’s accessible and it builds resilience that compounds over time. As pressures mount and AI raises the bar for what organisations can produce, expectations on professionals have never been higher. We’re building Regulate to help people meet these demands sustainably by embedding it into the way teams already work, not adding another source of stress.” Regulate has developed an app with a library of over 60 science-backed sessions, ranging from 90 seconds to 60 minutes, developed in partnership with scientific advisor Prof Dr Hottenrott, a leading European authority on Heart Rate Variability and its role in human performance and recovery from Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. Rather than offering generic mindfulness sessions that sit unused in corporate benefits portals, the platform surfaces the right intervention at the right moment. This includes a focus protocol before a high-stakes meeting, a breathing exercise after an intense discussion, or a team session before a workshop. “What convinced me was the science. Breathwork has a direct, measurable effect on how people think and perform under pressure and Regulate has built the right product to bring that into the workplace. I introduced it at Personio because I know it works,” says Hanno Renner, Co-Founder & CEO, Personio This contextual intelligence is powered by wearables and workday systems. By reading physiological signals from connected devices and understanding the structure of the user’s workday, Regulate can recommend personalised sessions aligned to the user’s current state and demands of the workday, making it the first breathwork platform that functions as an on-demand performance tool. The platform also provides organisations with aggregated usage and impact dashboards, giving HR and leadership teams visibility into team-level adoption patterns and trends without compromising individual privacy. In under a year, the platform has completed over 50,000 sessions across organisations, and its enterprise pipeline represents over €9 million in ARR potential. Regulate is already used by teams at leading organisations, including Raiffeisen Bank International, Vattenfall, Personio and others, including global enterprises and management consultancies. Victor Straatman, Partner at 4impact.vc, shared: "We back companies where business model and positive impact align. Regulate improves how people perform and how they feel, allowing them to thrive in a fast-changing work environment. The data shows that at scale, this is a very compelling combination and solution for overall wellbeing.” The company will use the capital to accelerate growth, deepen product capabilities, expand its live-format offerings, and grow its team.
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