Forbes profiled Casper co-founder Neil Parikh's launch of Ash, the $93 million-backed therapy chatbot, with a16z partner Daisy Wolf saying the firm handed Slingshot a term sheet as soon as it was ready to raise and calling the team "absolute magnets for talent."
In a Forbes feature, reporter Zoya Hasan chronicled how Casper co-founder Neil Parikh, a Forbes Under 30 alum, went from reinventing the mattress to building Ash, a therapy chatbot, with co-founder and machine-learning engineer Daniel Cahn. The piece frames the launch around Parikh's own experience finding a therapist who "changed my life," and a stark access gap of more than 10,000 people seeking care for every therapist. Unlike general models like ChatGPT, Ash was developed with clinicians and trained specifically on behavioral health data, guiding users through self-reflection rather than offering advice or diagnoses. Forbes reports the $93 million round, co-led by Radical Ventures and Forerunner Ventures, and quotes a16z partner Daisy Wolf, who said the firm handed Slingshot a term sheet as soon as the team was ready, adding that the founders "have the experience and know how to pull this off" and have been "absolute magnets for talent." Parikh notes that Ash redirects users in crisis to human professionals.
