What You Should Know:
– Slingshot AI announced the public launch of Ash, the first AI designed for therapy, alongside an extension of its Series A funding round. Co-led by Radical Ventures and Forerunner Ventures, this brings the total capital raised to $93M, with previous investors a16z, Felicis, and Menlo also participating.
– After 18 months of development and testing with 50,000 beta users, Ash is now available as a free iOS and Android app, offering deeply personalized mental health support to anyone with a phone.
Addressing the Global Mental Health Crisis
The launch of Ash comes at a critical time, as the mental health crisis continues to impact millions globally. In 2023, 59.2 million Americans sought therapy, yet reports indicate that 54% of people struggling with their mental health do not receive any care at all.
Slingshot AI is led by co-founder and CEO Daniel Cahn, an experienced AI engineer, and co-founder and President Neil Parikh, an entrepreneur who co-founded and scaled Casper to over $500 million revenue and IPO. Early testing has already shown Ash expanding access to evidence-based tools and transforming lives, providing support during critical transitions and busy moments.
“We’ve built Ash from the ground up to address this need and provide a new type of support. Ash understands what real mental health support looks and feels like. Ash will challenge you and take you on a therapeutic journey, and deliver the right modality at the right time,” said Daniel Cahn, co-founder and CEO of Slingshot AI.
How Ash Works: A Special-Purpose Foundation Model for Psychology
Unlike general-purpose AI assistants, Ash is built on a special-purpose foundation model for psychology, developed by Slingshot AI over the last 18 months. This specialized model is trained in three phases:
- Pre-training: The model is pre-trained using one of the largest and most diverse datasets of behavioral health data ever assembled, learning from dozens of therapeutic styles and approaches (e.g., CBT, DBT, ACT, psychodynamic therapy, motivational interviewing).
- Fine-tuning: Slingshot’s clinical team fine-tunes Ash to adapt to the specific nuances of AI therapy, including knowing when to challenge, when to stay silent, how to handle critical moments, and appropriate opportunities to end conversations.
- Reinforcement Learning: Ash continually improves and adapts each user’s experience based on signals from the conversation, allowing it to provide highly informed and personalized support.
Dr. Derrick Hull, a digital mental health pioneer and Clinical R&D Lead at Slingshot AI, explained, “With Ash, we’re not trying to replicate traditional therapy in AI form — we’re creating something new. By training on real therapeutic interactions and understanding what actually helps people change, we can offer support that’s both deeply personalized and grounded in clinical evidence. This isn’t about replacing therapists; it’s about ensuring that everyone who needs help can access it, especially those who’ve been historically underserved by our mental health system.”
Expert & Clinical Advisory Board for Safety and Efficacy
To ensure Ash’s safety, efficacy, and clinical grounding, Slingshot AI has formed an Expert & Clinical Advisory Board. This board comprises globally respected mental health experts, including:
- Dr. Thomas Insel (former head of the National Institutes of Mental Health, 2002-2015)
- Dr. Devika Bhushan (former Surgeon General of California)
- Dr. Mark Ungless (Psychologist and Director of Data Science, AI, and Research at Mental Health Innovations)
- Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy (prominent mental health advocate)
- Patricia Arean (Former Research Director of the National Institutes of Mental Health)
- Mahmoud Khedr (Lived Experience Advocate and Mental Health Innovator)
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