On the Andrew Yang podcast, Slingshot AI co-founder and CEO Neil Parikh laid out the case for Ash, the app built on Slingshot's first foundation model for psychology, then in private beta with a 250,000-person waitlist and $50 million in disclosed funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Felicis. Parikh argued that AI could move therapy from $150 to $250 an hour toward roughly the price of a Netflix subscription, with unlimited, on-demand access by voice or text and no year-long waitlists. He distinguished Ash from general chatbots, which validate users by design because their training rewards the easier, more agreeable response, whereas Ash is built to create "emotional heat" and push back. Trained on real human therapy through partnerships, much like a self-driving car, Ash adapts to each person, including cultural context. Host Andrew Yang, a longtime mental-health advocate, praised the mission, and Parikh noted that Ash reaches notably more men than most mental health platforms because users can speak freely without judgment.