Tech Brew profiled Slingshot AI's launch of Ash, the $93 million-backed therapy chatbot, highlighting how co-founder Neil Parikh built it to push back on users rather than flatter them, and to help people build real-world relationships rather than replace them.
In Tech Brew, Patrick Kulp profiled Slingshot AI's launch of Ash, the therapy chatbot backed by $93 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Radical Ventures, and Forerunner Ventures. Co-founder Neil Parikh told Tech Brew the company built Ash to counter the well-known sycophancy of popular chatbots, equipping it to challenge users when warranted and to end sessions once enough progress is made. "We don't want to build your best friend or your companion," Parikh said. "The goal is for Ash to actually help you build relationships in the real world." The piece explains that Ash is a foundation model fine-tuned on therapy data in dozens of therapeutic styles from partner organizations, supported by a clinical team that writes custom responses and reinforcement learning from user feedback. a16z partner Daisy Wolf called mental health AI a major opportunity that can scale access "only if it's built with deep clinical rigor and consumer trust at the core," while partner Bryan Kim cited Slingshot's proprietary dataset as its competitive advantage.
