WisdomTec

Human wisdom. Machine intelligence.Where you are.

At WisdomTec, we're exploring how artificial intelligence can help people come back to their own innate wisdom.

Our work brings together decades of clinical, scientific and technological experience with millennia of the world's wisdom traditions.

Explore Kindful Our approach

Wisdom Compassion Awareness

Our purpose

Helping people return to awareness, compassion and wisdom.

Why WisdomTec exists

Suffering happens at scale. Clinical care might not.

Artificial intelligence has an extraordinary capacity to recognise patterns of human experience and engage with people at a scale impossible for human care alone. We're interested in putting that capacity in service of addressing human suffering: helping people reconnect with their own innate agency, awareness, compassion and wisdom, and change their relationship with their difficult experience.

Reducing suffering from within.

As clinicians working in different parts of the world, we have witnessed the pervasiveness of suffering and trauma in many forms, across many, very different communities. Our work as clinicians has shaped both our understanding of suffering and our desire to respond to it. WisdomTec grew from that desire: to find new ways of bringing meaningful support to people, particularly when human care is scarce or unavailable.

Our first product

Kindful addresses human suffering through personalised, dynamically responsive, AI-supported, trauma-sensitive mindfulness practice and guided inquiry. Each interaction is generated in real time, responding to whatever a person brings in the moment.

Kindful helps people relate differently to difficult experiences. It supports emotional self-regulation, groundedness and insight. This creates space for a person to develop kinder and wiser responses.

Kindful is more than a meditation app, and more than a static library of practice. Kindful meets people where they are and gently guides them back to themselves.

Beyond a wellness app

Kindful goes beyond general wellness. We are developing Kindful towards an adjunctive digital therapeutic: one that can complement clinical care, support therapeutic processes and help people develop the capacity to meet suffering in varied clinical settings with greater awareness, compassion and agency.

We are building Kindful through systematic clinical research and careful evaluation, rather than a claim of established therapeutic efficacy.

Explore Kindful Our research

Kindful Module 1 · 1 min 20 sec

Today

An AI-supported mindfulness companion in research and development.

Being studied

Feasibility, acceptability, safety, engagement and mindfulness-related processes.

Our long-term aim

An evidence-based adjunct that complements human clinical care.

A different relationship with technology

Social media hacks human attention. AI hacks human relationship.

Much of modern technology has been designed to capture and hold our attention, and even imitate and displace human relationships. WisdomTec takes a different path.

Our algorithms are transparent about being artificial. They do not pretend to be human, and do not attempt to replace human relationships. Instead, we aim to strengthen personal agency, helping people return to their own experience, their relationships and the world around them.

The technology should be a bridge back to life, not an escape.

Explore Kindful Our approach to safety and ethics

Research

Built on clinical experience, establishing clinical evidence.

Our development is guided by clinical experience, scientific inquiry and systematic research.

Our research arc is geared towards establishing and explicating the evidence, safety and clinical application for Kindful to become a credible adjunct to human therapeutic care.

Complete

Pilot 1

Retreat participants used an early, text-only version for two weeks, followed by a focus group.

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Under way

Further pilots

Exploring engagement and self-regulation in more depth, including early-access pilots with organisations.

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In process

Phase 1 clinical trial

A randomised, waitlist-controlled study with 200 to 300 adults in South African primary care, over four weeks.

See the detail

Explore our research Explore a research collaboration

Partnerships

Bringing human wisdom within reach.

Human suffering is not confined to clinical settings. It is present in our workplaces, families, communities, anywhere there is life.

Clinical and research partnerships

From trauma-sensitive mindfulness to therapeutic evidence. Exploring Kindful in defined clinical populations and conditions, with research run from within the platform.

Explore a collaboration

Early access and organisational pilots

Supporting the person, not just the employee. Structured pilots that let people experience Kindful in their everyday lives.

Explore a pilot

Community and social impact

Reaching people beyond traditional care. Working with community organisations and nonprofits where human care is difficult to access.

Explore a community partnership

Explore partnerships

The people behind WisdomTec

Clinicians, researchers, entrepreneurs, AI specialists.

Our work brings together clinicians, researchers, entrepreneurs and AI specialists who share a commitment to exploring how artificial intelligence can serve human wellbeing without diminishing human agency or relationships. We are interested in what becomes possible when technology helps people return to themselves, to one another and to the world around them.

Co-founder and CEO

Dr Paul Freinkel MD PhD

Paul is a medical doctor, PhD in psychology, and entrepreneur, with local and international experience co-founding and building businesses in law enforcement technology, crowdsourced digital media and healthcare. In addition to his entrepreneurial work, he has lectured and supervised postgraduate students on Masters and PhD programmes in South Africa and the UK. To maintain his clinical skills, Paul keeps a small family practice in a multidisciplinary medical centre he built in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Co-founder and Chief Mindfulness Officer

Dr Simon Whitesman MD PhD

Simon is a Cape Town-based medical doctor, psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher with over 30 years of clinical and teaching experience. He has dedicated the last two decades to training and supporting professionals to share mindfulness in clinical and community contexts, and is now using this experience to ethically train an AI system to bring trauma-sensitive mindfulness to scale. Simon founded the Institute for Mindfulness South Africa, created and taught a two-year training in mindfulness-based interventions at Stellenbosch University's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, and has authored over 25 peer-reviewed publications in mindfulness, wellbeing and trauma.

Chief Scientific Advisor

Prof Amit Bernstein PhD

Amit is a Professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Core Faculty at the Center for Healthy Minds at UW-Madison, and was previously Professor of Clinical Psychology in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Haifa. His expertise includes behavioural process-focused case conceptualisation, acceptance- and mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioural interventions, and adapting these approaches for socio-culturally diverse and marginalised populations, such as refugees. With students and colleagues, Amit has authored over 170 articles and book chapters (h-index 66), edited a book and multiple journal special issues.

Chief Technical Officer

Jake Shepherd BSc Elec Eng

Jake is the founder and CEO of Tomorrow Built Ltd, a custom software, AI integration and business consulting company and WisdomTec's development partner. He has decades of experience building and commercialising complex systems, and was Director of Engineering and Technology at Synthesis Software Technologies (Pty) Ltd and a Director of CQS Technology Holdings (Pty) Ltd.

System Architect and Developer

Gadiel Shepherd BA Psych, PGP AI & ML

Gadi is an applied AI engineer and co-founder of Tomorrow Built, WisdomTec's development partner. His work combines hands-on development of applied AI systems, including retrieval-augmented generation and agent-based workflows, with strategic guidance on data readiness, system design and responsible adoption.

What we believe

Machine intelligence may be artificial, but
human wisdom and
compassion is not.

Get in touch

Human wisdom. Machine intelligence.Where you are.

Suffering happens at scale. Clinical care might not.

Reducing suffering from within.

Beyond a wellness app

Social media hacks human attention. AI hacks human relationship.

Built on clinical experience, establishing clinical evidence.

Pilot 1

Further pilots

Phase 1 clinical trial

Bringing human wisdom within reach.

Clinical and research partnerships

Early access and organisational pilots

Community and social impact

Clinicians, researchers, entrepreneurs, AI specialists.

Dr Paul Freinkel MD PhD

Dr Simon Whitesman MD PhD

Prof Amit Bernstein PhD

Jake Shepherd BSc Elec Eng

Gadiel Shepherd BA Psych, PGP AI & ML

Machine intelligence may be artificial, but human wisdom and compassion is not.

Machine intelligence may be artificial, but
human wisdom and
compassion is not.