Slingshot AI

Market position

Positions itself as building the first foundation model for psychology, distinct from general-purpose assistants and from earlier single-modality mental health chatbots. It operates in a digital behavioral health chatbot market that includes Woebot, which raised over $123 million and wound down its flagship chatbot app in mid-2025, and Wysa, which had raised just under $30 million. Public trust remains a constraint: a KFF study found only 29% of the public trusts AI chatbots for health information.

Multi-modality training rather than reliance on a single therapeutic school; a purpose-built model rather than prompt engineering over a general assistant; design oriented to self-determination (autonomy, competence, relatedness) including willingness to challenge users; conversational memory for longitudinal engagement; and clinical leadership drawn from digital health operators.

Technology

A large language model-based foundation model for psychology trained on what the company describes as a large and diverse behavioral health dataset covering multiple therapeutic modalities (CBT, DBT, ACT, gestalt, psychodynamic, motivational interviewing), rather than a wrapper over a general-purpose model. Ash supports voice and text interaction, uses conversational memory to maintain continuity across sessions, detects patterns, and applies clinical safeguards. Reporting references custom training over roughly 18 months and use of high-performance GPU clusters.

Go-to-market

The company ran an extended private beta before general availability, reporting 25,000 beta testers on its own site (including a large number of therapists) and 50,000 beta users per July 2025 reporting. Ash was made generally available in July 2025 alongside a funding announcement, supported by investor and press coverage. The company's site invites prospective users to 'Try Ash' and previously directed interested parties to request early access to the model.

Individual consumers seeking mental health support, particularly those with subclinical concerns such as sadness, stress, relationship difficulties, daily health habits, and life challenges, as well as users seeking longer-term support and personal growth. Therapists have participated in beta testing.

Geography

Headquartered in New York City, with reporting also describing a London presence.

History

Slingshot AI states it began work on a foundation model for psychology in January 2024. In August 2024 it was reported to have raised a $30 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz, followed by an undisclosed 'fast-follow' round from Menlo Ventures. In January 2025, a16z publicly announced it had led the company's Series A, putting total capital raised at $40 million at that point. The company remained largely quiet publicly until July 2025, when it launched Ash for general availability and disclosed more than $50 million in additional funding led by Radical Ventures and Forerunner Ventures, bringing total financing to $93 million.

Risks & controversies

Coverage notes broader skepticism about mental health chatbots: doubts about their ability to handle acute behavioral health episodes outside clinician presence, data protection concerns, clinician worries about substitution for human care and the difficulty of replicating therapeutic alliance, and low public trust in AI chatbots for health information (29% per KFF). The commercial fragility of the category is illustrated by Woebot winding down its chatbot app despite over $123 million raised. Co-founder Parikh's prior company Casper had a turbulent trajectory, going public in 2020 at a $470 million IPO after a $1.1 billion private valuation and being taken private in November 2021 for roughly $286 million.