Slingshot AI Raises $40M for Mental Health Chatbot

New York City-based Slingshot AI has raised $40 million in capital for its mental health chatbot.

Legacy investor Andreessen Horowitz led the round with participation from the Cultural Leadership Fund and a slew of angel investors.

The startup is led by Neil Parikh, who co-founded sleep unicorn Casper, and is focused on building a foundational model for psychology.

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In a release, Andreessen Horowitz noted that consumers were once averse to talking to chatbots about their mental health, but that is changing.

“Generative AI changed that. Seemingly overnight, the bots got 100x better and people wanted to chat with bots all day everyday. About everything! But we knew that general purpose foundation models were not the answer when it comes to psychology,” Andreessen Horowitz said in a statement. General purpose foundation models try to provide you with concrete answers. Good therapists do not. They help you recognize that you’re in control of your own life, and give you the confidence to take charge. They help you improve your connections with other people. They don’t replace them. Recognizing this, we set out to find the best team in the world building a foundation model for psychology.”

In 2024, reports surfaced that the company had raised $30 million. The total raised is now up to $40 million.
Slingshot AI is far from being the first mental health startup to use an AI-backed chatbot. In fact, New York-based Jimini, which provides an AI therapist assistant, raised $8 million at the end of last year. Additionally, behavioral health chatbot Wysa raised $20 million in 2022, and Woebot closed a whopping $90 million Series B funding round in 2021.

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