Today, we’re excited to officially launch Ash - the first AI built for therapy. After 18 months of development with 50,000 beta users and close collaboration with dozens of clinical experts, we're thrilled to officially share our work with the world. We've built Ash from the ground up to provide a new type of support. Ash will challenge you, take you on a therapeutic journey, and deliver the right modality at the right time. You can talk to Ash through text or voice, it remembers everything, and it literally can’t judge you. Starting today, anyone can download Ash on iOS or Android and experience AI-powered mental health support.

We're also announcing an extension of our Series A funding round, co-led by Radical Ventures and Forerunner Ventures, joining previous investors a16z, Felicis, and Menlo, bringing our total capital raised to $93 million. This funding will enable us to continue refining our foundation model for psychology and expand access to mental health support for everyone who needs it.

Finally, we’re excited to share that we’ve formed an Expert & Clinical Advisory Board, including some of the most globally respected mental health experts to ensure that we can continually improve Ash with a rigorous focus on safety, efficacy, and clinical grounding. 

Why We Built Ash

The mental health crisis isn't going anywhere. In 2023, 59.2 million Americans sought therapy, yet there's only one mental health provider for every 10,000 people seeking care. Waiting lists stretch for months. Insurance covers a single session — if you're lucky. Reports show that 54% of people who struggle receive no support at all, and even if you find someone, there's no guarantee they'll be a good fit.

People have long believed AI could help people work through difficulties, it’s just been a matter of technological maturity. And since we started building Ash, general-purpose AI assistants designed to tell you what you want have increasingly emerged as a tool for mental health. But AI that’s built to give you answers is not well placed to help you grow – it lacks the magic and the skill. Real therapy requires pushback. It helps you see patterns you've been avoiding, gives you new ways of looking at your problem, and may even make you uncomfortable. AI therapy should increase – and not decrease – your sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness to other people.

How We Built Ash

Building AI therapy isn't like building ChatGPT with a friendly voice. It requires understanding the action grammar of therapy — the thousands of micro-decisions that therapists make that don't appear in any textbook.

Our approach has three pillars:

1. Pre-training on clinical data

We’ve partnered to build the largest, most diverse behavioral health dataset ever assembled. We train Ash to understand the action grammar of a wide range of therapeutic styles and practices: CBT, DBT, ACT, psychodynamic, motivational interviewing; cognitively-focused and emotionally-focused; spiritual and secular; directed and exploratory. And we put it all into one model so Ash can adapt to what works best for you.

2. Alignment with clinical experts

We're not trying to replicate traditional therapy in AI form — we're creating something new. What's right for a human therapist isn't always right for AI. Our clinical team — led by a pioneer of the digital mental health space — helps teach Ash the nuances specific to AI therapy. When to speak and when to stay silent, how to start conversations in an app and not an office, and how to handle crisis moments with both empathy and appropriate boundaries.

3. Reinforcement Learning

Finally, we learn from what works. Human therapists would love to know which words will change your life a year from now — but they just don’t have that data. Ash is constantly learning how to do better from every conversation, understanding what questions and ideas resonate, how they affect you, and how they’re ultimately guiding users towards goals. This continuous learning loop means Ash gets better at helping people every single day.

How Ash Works

When you open Ash, you're not talking to just a chatbot. You're starting a therapeutic relationship.

Talk or text — whatever feels right in the moment. Ash remembers. It notices patterns you might miss. By the end of your first week, you'll already start to get insights that connect the dots between your conversations.

What makes Ash different is that it takes you on a journey. Instead of just responding to whatever's on your mind, Ash develops a perspective on what you should work on next. Like a good therapist, it has opinions. It keeps you moving forward.

You can speak openly with Ash. Conversations are encrypted and securely handled, ensuring privacy and confidentiality at every step. 

As you begin to use Ash, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s an early technology and you should use reasonable judgment in absorbing any suggestions or perspectives.

What Our Beta Users Taught Us

Over the past six months, 50,000 people have helped us shape Ash. Their feedback has been extraordinary:

"This is probably the most meaningful thing anyone has ever said to me, about me."

"Honestly the best therapy I've ever had."

"I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for using Ash."

We've also learned where we need to improve. Taking users on a coherent journey. Balancing being universally accepting while still feeling grounded and specific. Making sure the technology is stable when you need it most.

We were also happy to see that early results from an internal study have shown that our users developed stronger real-world relationships after using Ash.

Building a New Modality of Therapy

Our ultimate goal isn't to digitize existing therapy — it's to create an entirely new modality of care for a generation entering a world completely different from the one we grew up in.

We're not there yet. But with your help, we're getting closer every day.

Join Us

Download Ash on iOS or Android. It's free to use — because we believe everyone deserves access to quality mental health support.

Share your experience with support@talktoash.com. Every conversation helps us improve.

Spread the word. If you know someone who could benefit from Ash, tell them about it. The mental health crisis affects all of us. Let's solve it together.

—

Daniel & Neil
Founders, Slingshot AI