How Sibyl Is Building 24/7 AI Support for Women After Pregnancy Loss
- Zofia Krajewska
- Aug 26
- 6 min read
Pregnancy loss is one of the most common experiences in women’s health, yet one of the least supported. One in three women experiences PTSD symptoms after miscarriage, and depression or anxiety can last long after a healthy pregnancy. Despite the scale of the issue, few solutions exist.
Melissa Ablett-Jordaan is working to change that. After senior leadership roles in innovation policy, media, and as Global COO of CIC (Cambridge Innovation Center), she faced her own journey of repeated pregnancy loss. Out of that experience came Sibyl, an AI-powered emotional companion designed to support women after miscarriage.
Launching first in Europe, Sibyl offers guided journaling and a 24/7 chatbot, creating a safe space to process grief and find support. In time, it could also transform research: Sibyl is among the first platforms to collect pregnancy loss data at scale, opening new possibilities for understanding and care.
In this interview, Melissa shares the story behind Sibyl, the hurdles of building in a stigmatized space, and why she believes AI companions can redefine women’s health.
Zofia Krajewska: Why did you build Sibyl?
Melissa Ablett-Jordaan: From a career perspective, I've always been attracted to solving problems; the messier and more chaotic the problem, the better. I first worked in innovation policy in Massachusetts and Boston, trying to solve the problem of all entrepreneurs moving to Silicon Valley and how we could keep them on the East Coast and support them. I then joined a small media startup and helped that company grow, which was about solving problems like “how do we build a business?”, “how do we hire awesome people?”, “how do we find product-market fit?”, et cetera. Then, when I joined CIC, for the past 10 years, it was all about “how do we expand this company around the world?”. I’ve always loved that.
In my last few years at CIC, working as Global Chief Operating Officer, I was simultaneously going through what was by far my most difficult health journey. I had two missed miscarriages, and a third pregnancy that I lost in the beginning of the second trimester due to chromosomal issues.
I have now gone on to have two beautiful, healthy children, which is amazing, but back then, I reached a point where I really wanted to take a career break. I wanted to be home with my kids more and to reflect on what I wanted next in my career. I became really focused on women's health. At the same time, I was using AI a lot more. I'm one of those people whose ChatGPT has a name. She coaches me. I work with her both factually and emotionally. And I was just thinking, “God, I wish I had this when I was going through my loss experiences”. And that was really where the idea and the need to build Sibyl came from.
Where is Sibyl now?
I am very close to launching the MVP in a closed beta test here in the EU. I've gotten some really great signups for that from women who have experienced loss in their past and are willing to help me test the app. Sibyl will launch first as an emotional companion, in order to address the fact that one in three women experience PTSD symptoms after miscarriage or pregnancy loss, depression and anxiety symptoms can last for a year, and even when a woman has a healthy child again.
My vision for Sibyl is that it’ll really be a 24/7 companion, and that after a woman goes through a loss, she's able to download Sibyl as an app on her phone. Right now, I’ll be launching with a chatbot and guided journaling functionality, and the goal of both of those tools is to help women process their emotions, have a companion available whenever they need information, and to have a safe space to talk.
There's a lot of things I want to build after this. I want the tool to be able to, for example, flag and notice when someone is going through complex grief or PTSD, or the possibility for Sibyl to help women understand, from a diagnostic perspective, what they might want to think about before they start trying again. There are also some really interesting integrations and other opportunities I'm pursuing, but right now, I’m really at the MVP stage and raising angel funding. My goal is to be launched in the App Store by October for the EU and UK.
What are the technical or ethical hurdles you face with AI understanding natural language and emotional intelligence?
I’m someone who wants to launch something perfect right away, and this is the first time I’ve felt that something is so iterative. There’s a great quote from the founder of Linkedin who says “if you’re not embarrassed by your first version of your product, you're not launching soon enough”. That’s very much the season that I'm in right now.
I’m building on top of OpenAI, working a lot with prompts. The journaling perspective will be static prompts that I’m developing in consultation with a leading psychiatrist in the prenatal mental health space. Then, I'm looking to build on top of this with machine learning. My goal is also to ethically and consensually use the data of the women participating.
An interesting thing about Sibyl is that there’s no other platform collecting pregnancy loss data at scale, and we would really be one of the first organizations doing this. The opportunity that data presents to keep improving the app and making it a better companion is really exciting, in addition to the implications this data could have for research and for improving the overall care women receive after a loss.
Were you thinking of later integrating with health providers or mental health professionals? Or do you envision it being more standalone?
My first goal is to really see that there's product market fit. I'm pursuing a B2C pathway for the very first avenue. But there's certainly the potential to integrate. And, for example, talking to other providers, you know, providers of fertility testing, providers of diagnostic platforms, the ability to have this really deep AI companion for pregnancy loss, then nestled into all of these other women's health platforms is really exciting. So there's also that from a future acquisition strategy standpoint, et cetera. So indeed, that B2B2C angle will be the next chapter after validating the product market fit.
How do you measure the effectiveness of the product?
That will be through user feedback and engagement. I’m also in conversations with hospitals in the Netherlands to see if we could do some pilots with them. We may then really be able to say “okay, can we prove that Sibyl actually improves the mental health of a woman six months, nine months, or a year post loss?", and what does that look like.
Are you going to later expand into other types of grief?
I think what's so fascinating about this is that it’s really a niche, where it's grief combined with a really hard to navigate care medical system. I was talking to someone who just had a cancer diagnosis the other day, who said he wishes he had something like this. I think what you're seeing with startups in this space is that there’s a really robust and deep potential for digital tools to help us with things that are still really stigmatized in society and hard to talk about. I am deeply passionate about the miscarriage, pregnancy loss, and infertility space, and could see the concept of Sibyl being expanded to these other potential pillars.
What is the hardest thing about building in a space like pregnancy loss?
There is no one building in this space, which is a double-edged sword. It’s great because you really stand out. On the other hand, you're dealing with a really stigmatized topic, so you need to be careful when talking about it, engaging with investors, when discussing profitability, in terms of pricing, you have to handle that very carefully. And that's where, ironically, what I went through is a big asset because I know firsthand how I would have wanted to be spoken to about a product for this niche.
Beyond that, in women's health, we need more big exits to prove that the market is there. It's tough to build things if the medical community isn't yet fully caught up with being a real issue there.
What advice would you give other founders building AI companions or in women’s health?
This is my first startup and my first time doing this. I think the message of “just start and keep going” is so true. Each day, you make a little bit more progress, and you try something new. You simultaneously feel like you're building the most important, biggest thing, but then also think “what am I doing?”. I’m doing tiny things every day to move it forward. And I would just say that that is very normal, and just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
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