This is an exclusive BHB+ story
The autism therapy industry is hitting more of a stride in 2025 as dealmaking picks up and an increased focus on outcomes is seen as a primary driver of continued success.
However, those trends potentially mask a number of formidable headwinds, not the least of which include state-level reforms, payer cuts and the arrival of potentially damaging reforms to Medicaid at the federal level.
At the same time, seemingly intractable workforce challenges threaten attempts at growth and refining clinical quality.
No company is immune to these forces. Even so, organizational leaders can look to the recent past to learn about where the market is going, keeping an eye on specific organizations that could live the development of the above trends in real-time.
Here are Autism Business News’ companies to watch in 2025.
ABA Centers of America’s transition from fast-growing upstart to established player
ABA Centers of America has grabbed its fair share of attention.
Between accolades for its rapid growth and going after a notable payer entity of its alleged reimbursement practices, the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based ABA and autism testing provider has found itself in the spotlight multiple times for substantial reasons. (ABA Centers of America led this list last year as well.)
What has also contributed to ABA Centers of America’s spotlight is the openness with which it makes its interest in new business partnerships known. At the end of 2024, Chris Barnett, the company’s founder and now chairman, told ABN that the company was looking for a financial partner to provide debt financing.
The hunt is still on for “the right strategic growth partner,” Chris Barnett told NYSE TV in June. That partner will help ABA Centers of America “expand to even more states and [become] a nationwide brand,” he added.
ABA Centers of America operates in 40 cities across 10 states and offers care in several settings: in-clinic, in-home and in the community.
Its swift growth, at least in terms of revenue, continues to get recognition. The company topped Financial Time’s “The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2025” list with 33,511% revenue growth from 2020 to 2023. The FT reports ABA Centers of America’s revenue in 2023 was $196.9 million.
It will likely appear on the next Inc. 5000 list, another compilation of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. In April, Inc. published its winners of regional lists. ABA Centers of America topped the Southeast region with 5,794% in revenue growth from 2021 to 2023.
What makes this company intriguing to watch is that it is much more similar to watching a tech startup, not a traditional health care services provider. How long will the explosive growth continue? Will an investor step in with a big check to keep what they have cooking going, and if so, which firm?
While the fast-growing revenue numbers are attractive, ABA Centers of America’s approach to contracting with payers might give one pause. The company leans into establishing operations in new locations, including out-of-network claims and single-case agreements. This arrangement tends to be out of the norm with the rest of the largely in-network-focused autism therapy industry. This strategy can result in higher reimbursement rates.
This approach is well known in behavioral health, where a significant portion of care is delivered on an out-of-network basis compared to the rest of health care. A 2024 study found that patients went out-of-network for behavioral health services 3.5 times more often than patients receiving medical or surgical care. The same report found that this led to greater financial burdens for patients receiving care on this basis.
This kind of contracting is enough outside of the norm to inspire well-known payers to just stop playing the game. In January, ABA Centers of America sued Canton, Massachusetts-based Point32Health, which had stopped processing and paying claims. A review of public court documents shows that the case is still pending a decision on a motion to dismiss.
In the last five years, investment in companies like ABA Centers of America has fluctuated, with spikes and declines, but it is now rebounding. In that process, investors and the firms they contract with to assess potential investments have gotten more savvy about what the norm and potential success within the norm of the industry look like. Seeing how investors handle ABA Centers of America in the coming months will tell a lot about what the market is and isn’t about when it comes to straying from the norm.
What’s going to happen with KKR’s autism therapy companies?
The investment and finance giant KKR & Co. Inc. started autism therapy giant BlueSprig Pediatrics in 2018 and resuscitated assets from a former behavioral health investment into Gracent in 2022. Each is at the point in their timelines where something notable on the dealmaking front could happen.
BlueSprig Pediatrics named Will Abbott CEO in March. Abbott came to the role with a background at notable organizations, including Carbon Health and CVS Health Corp. (NYSE: CVS). His most recent role before joining BlueSprig was CEO of InnovaCare Health, a primary care provider that specializes in value-based care.
The arrival of a new CEO at BlueSprig with a high-caliber pedigree could mean significant changes for the company. It could mean that BlueSprig leverages its scale and regional concentration in the South, especially in Florida, to break serious ground on value-based contracting in the space, especially given Abbott’s background in primary care contracting. It could also signal to potential buyers that there is a deft hand at the wheel, one that has led both established and growing organizations.
On the Gracent side, some kind of deal three years into a revival plan would fit shorter-term thinking about an asset. KKR could sell the company or bring on another investor to boost the growth of its multi-specialty model. Either way, it could be the next smaller provider to become a platform investment that scales a slightly different approach to autism therapy care models.
The all-in-one care model makes Gracent something more than just an autism therapy provider. Rather, Mark Shalvarjian, the CEO of Gracent, describes the company as a “pediatric therapy company.” This model of care that either starts with autism therapy, largely ABA or eventually includes ABA is something more than a nascent movement in the industry. There is a growing number of providers engaging with this model. The most developed and high-profile of that cohort might be Cortica.
Acorn Health layoffs and the hollowing out of middle management
Early in the year, Acorn Health reworked the structure of its regional and middle management.
This kind of move is more reminiscent of the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the inflation that followed, which crested into a summer in 2022 marked by layoffs and center closures. But the gutting of middle-management roles is not at all isolated to autism therapy. Dozens of companies in 2025 so far have cut these kinds of jobs, often finding the work duplicating and too far removed from revenue generation.
It will be notable to see if these cuts are followed by more as the end of 2025 arrives and any potential mismatches between costs and revenue not addressed by the earlier round of layoffs come into starker relief with the passage of time.
Acorn Health’s belief that it can take some of that regional management away and/or consolidate it in other parts of the company may also be a testament that the oft-perceived regionality of health care operations can be handled with a smaller handful of professionals. Often, autism therapy providers struggle to scale their operations given the highly diverse national and state markets, as well as local markets within a given state. This is magnified, especially if a company works with a lot of Medicaid clients.
The company is also almost two years into the tenure of a new CEO: Richard Hallworth was named to the role in August 2023, more than enough time for Hallworth and his team to be in place with a new vision for the company.
CentralReach marks influx of autism-related tech investment
ABN has tracked several investments in the autism therapy space, specifically vendors that serve autism therapy providers.
To a large extent, investments in software companies that serve a specific industry have some assumed that the industry is worth serving in the first place. Additionally, there has to be an assumption that the operators in the market need software solutions and will be the kind of customer that is worth serving from a financial perspective. This boost of investment is, at least, a tangential validation of the autism therapy market.
As the vendors of autism therapy companies, the success of these companies can be a proxy for the success of ABA providers.
The biggest deal of the year was the acquisition of the mainstay and leading incumbent in the space, CentralReach, by Roper Technologies (Nasdaq: ROP). CentralReach was slated to bring in about $175 million in the year ending in June. On its most recent earnings call with investors and analysts, executives at Roper said that CentralReach has about 200,000 daily users. Roper Technologies acquired CentralReach for $1.85 billion, $1.65 billion net of tax benefit.
In May, New York City-based Passage Health raised $8 million in a Series A round to expand its consolidated business management and electronic health records platform for ABA organizations.
AI-focused software company Brellium landed a $16.7 million Series A in April to grow its compliance, documentation and organizational intelligence platform, which is optimized for ABA and other specialties that also support those with autism.
What comes next for Already Autism Health?
Charlotte, North Carolina-based autism therapy provider Already Autism Health is also on this list because of the stir it caused. At the beginning of the year, it announced that it had landed a private equity backer and acquired two firms.
The combination of the three organizations will be a meaningful bellwether for the industry at large. The surge in autism therapy dealmaking so far this year indicates renewed interest in the space. A report by PwC states that behavioral health dealmaking was up 35% in the first quarter of 2025, driven by a five-year high in autism therapy deal totals. But what will this chapter of ABA look like? That remains unanswered. That’s why Already Autism Health is on this list.
It’s early on in the hold period of Already Autism Health. More growth, both M&A and de novo, could be expected. The fusion of three organizations could lead to role duplication and some layoffs. However, the overlap of select roles might support the expansion of the company.
Pediatric Plus, another bellwether company
Pediatric Plus has several interesting facets. It has a “blended service model” that integrates ABA, physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech and language pathology services. It’s a platform company that could take this not-so-nascent approach across the nation.
However, it has an element that isn’t so common in the autism therapy space: the involvement of a college.
In January, two private equity firms — Leavitt Equity Partners and Fulcrum Equity Partners — and the private online university Western Governors University announced a minority investment in the company. Founders Todd and Amy Denton remain the largest shareholders and serve on its board of directors.
The involvement of a college is a compelling prospect. On the one hand, the industry’s workforce challenges require new perspectives in high-level company positions on how to attract people to the industry. Perhaps the single greatest challenge of the industry is the turnover of behavior technicians. These roles require education and training to get a certification from a credentialing body that usually requires 40 hours of instruction and training. This kind of work is the purview of private online colleges.
The investors and Western Governors University have previously not responded to requests for comment about the involvement of Western Governors.
