Neil Parikh is the co-founder and president of Slingshot AI, the research lab building Ash and a foundation model for psychology. An entrepreneur and investor based in New York, he has spent his career building consumer products and brands that change how people care for their health, and is now focused on making quality mental health support accessible to everyone.

Before Slingshot, Parikh co-founded Casper in 2013, the direct-to-consumer company that reshaped how a generation thinks about sleep. He grew Casper to more than $500 million in revenue and led it through a 2020 IPO, and he holds several patents spanning sleep and robotics. He left medical school at Brown University to start the company, drawing on a family steeped in medicine.

Parikh is also an active investor who has backed more than 150 startups, many in health and mental health, including companies such as Oura. His own experience with therapy shaped his conviction that better access to mental health support is one of the most important problems to solve, and that thoughtfully built AI can help close the gap.