You know this used to be a sheep farm?

I didn’t. 

To be honest, I didn’t know much about the Allied Arts Guild of Menlo Park. What I did know was that the best and brightest of mental health innovation were about to descend on the venue for the 2026 Demo Day of the One Mind Accelerator (OMA). Over the next twenty-four hours I’d hear from fourteen of the world’s top mental health founders and chat with the payers, policy makers and investors shaping this industry.

But at this moment, I was sitting on a wooden bench listening to the birds and learning about sheep farms from the gardener.

Well, more specifically I was learning how a young couple, Delight and Garfield Merner, had bought this land in 1929 when it was a three and a half acre sheep farm on the edge of Menlo Park. The Merners had been inspired by the craft guilds that had popped up in Europe as a reaction to industrialisation. The leaders of this movement were appalled by the lack of humanity in industrial era products and wanted to restore a sense of craft and artisanship. Their answer was to create craft guilds; associations of craftspeople who worked under shared standards, trained one another through apprenticeship, and protected the quality and dignity of their trade against industrial market forces.

The Merners wanted to bring this model to California and buying a sheep farm was their first step in doing so. On this plot of land, they designed a Spanish Colonial themed campus and in 1929 opened the Allied Arts Guild. Almost one hundred years later, dozens of craftspeople come to this space every day, to create, to collaborate and to teach curious Irishmen about the history of this special place.

On this sunny California day, while the painters painted and the potters pottered, another group of passionate individuals were taking their seats in the main hall of the Allied Arts Guild. The fourteen founders of One Mind’s 2026 Accelerator cohort had arrived and the audience were keen to hear what these innovators had to say.

Seats shuffled and silence fell as the first guest, Tim Ferriss, was brought on stage. I’m a Tim Ferriss fanboy. No, I haven’t cracked the four hour work-week (or the four hour anything for that matter), but he was one of the first “internet people” I ever followed. He’s spent hundreds of hours in my ears and I’ve always appreciated the depth of his curiosity. In real life, Tim was weirdly… normal. He talked openly about his own mental health journey, his interest in novel treatments — from psychedelics to neuromodulation — and shared some pointed advice for founders. But there was one quote from his talk that I underlined in my notebook. The importance of inflection points. 

Tim was one of the first investors in Uber and he told the crowd how the success of that business was based on inflections. The iPhone had launched in 2007, meaning for the first time, people had smartphones with GPS. Mobile payments and Google Maps had also been recently developed. Without these technology inflections, Uber could not have existed. But with them, it was the perfect time for a ride-sharing business to be created. It was almost inevitable.

Tim invited all of us to think about the inflections happening in mental health. And because I’m a fanboy, I dutifully accepted his invitation. As each founder stood on stage, presenting their business, I thought of the inflections that might be shaping the opportunities in front of them.

The first inflection that was quite clear to me was the market shift towards outcomes. In the US, healthcare spending on mental health and substance use disorder has increased from $41B in 2001 to $140B by 2021. Today, it’s even higher. This growth was driven by an increase in access to care - 87.3% of spending growth is accounted for by an increase in the volume of cases. This market has been defined by this trait of increasing access. But that is changing. Payer behavioural health costs are increasing between 10% and 20% each year. Whether we like it or not, this is unsustainable for them. As a reaction, payers are increasingly demanding outcomes evidence, not just utilisation data, to justify continued investment. While access to care is not a solved problem, the market is clearly shifting towards outcomes and companies are reacting.

Some companies are better placed than others to take advantage of this inflection. I’m particularly interested in those who can deliver superior outcomes by focusing on a specific population or condition and delivering a comprehensive care model designed for them. Carmine di Maro calls them “Super Servers”.

Nosis Health is one such Super Server. Duffy Fallon is its Founder and you can’t help but like the guy. When he was on stage he shared the story of how his own recovery journey inspired the idea for Nosis to treat substance use disorder as a whole-person, chronic condition. They do this by wrapping addiction medicine, diagnostics, therapy, coaching, lifestyle interventions, GLP-1s and more into a single care programme. So far, they’re delivering impressive outcomes — 77% primary substance abstinence, 90% retention of patients in care, and improvements in key biomarkers like A1C, CRP, and ApoB. They’re small samples but they show high potential. Duffy mentioned some inflection points he was seeing in his own work, specifically, the cultural momentum behind recovery and whole-person care, the emergence of GLP-1s in SUD treatment and the ability for AI to personalise care (more on that later). Nosis is still in the early chapters of its journey but they’ve already bootstrapped to $250K in ARR and their outcomes are impressive.

Another OMA company working at the intersection of inflections is Birches Health. Digital addictions are on the rise — 72 million people in the US now have a daily gambling habit — but most providers are not specialised in treatment for these conditions. As a result, it’s hard for them to deliver good outcomes. Birches have built a specialised clinical network for these digital behavioural addictions, recruiting and training providers in their methodology. With this, 49% of all Birches patients achieved clinically meaningful improvement and that rises to 68% when focused on moderate to extreme patients¹. This focus on outcomes is driving commercial results. In 2025 they grew revenue 4X and have raised over $20M.

Damayanti Dipayana is the CEO and Founder of Manatee Health and at the Demo Day she shared her thesis; that by engaging the whole family in care they can deliver better outcomes. Manatee delivers outpatient mental health care for the whole family, including kids and caregivers and so far Damayanti’s thesis seems to be proving true. 87% of children in Manatee care improve at discharge vs. 28% in traditional care (based on PHQ9, GAD7, PSC17) and families stay for twenty-two sessions vs. four in child-only sessions in standard outpatient care. When Tim Ferriss was speaking, people wanted his advice on how to grow your business. He said that having a truly awesome product is the most important factor. Manatee gets all of its referrals directly from health plans and providers and they’re growing 5X year on year. Yes, growth can be hard. But if you make something that truly makes people better, at higher rates than your competitors, growth will come.

In one of the breaks from the presentations, I got talking to some of the team from Radicle Science. I had been thinking for a while about this market inflection towards outcomes. Everyone needs better outcomes data now, but building that evidence base as a startup is quite hard. If outcomes are the gold in this new market, Radicle Science are creating the shovels. Radicle run large-scale, automated clinical trials for non-prescription mental health treatments, giving companies the outcomes evidence that payers are now demanding. The idea is to make evidence generation much faster and cheaper than traditional trials. They’re also working on an interesting new initiative called “Certified Effective™” which aims to be a consumer standard for wellness solutions, allowing brands to be “certified” for the wellness claims they make. In mental health, there are a lot of wellness products but it’s impossible for consumers to know what will work and what won’t. Radicle Science may bring some much needed clarity to this murky market.

Policy inflections can reshape markets too. Today, there are three different policy shifts creating opportunities for the companies in this cohort.

The first is in psychedelics. On April 18th Trump signed an executive order directing the FDA to prioritise psychedelic drug review and allocating $50M through ARPA-H to match investments made by state governments for psychedelic research. The FDA has already responded, issuing National Priority Vouchers to three companies developing psilocybin and methylone therapies. This is directly relevant to companies like Biomia, who are developing nature-inspired CNS therapeutics including an early-stage ibogaine programme for opioid use disorder. 

The second is deprescription. On Monday of this week (May 4th), the HHS launched a formal action plan to curb psychiatric overprescribing, with US Health Secretary Kennedy calling out the "overmedicalization" of mental health, particularly in children. Approximately one in six US adults is now on an SSRI, and whatever you think about the credibility of the HHS’s move to challenge the prescription rates of SSRIs, it is a clear policy inflection point for the industry. Specifically, CMS is creating a new method for clinicians to get paid for the time they spend helping patients discontinue medications. Mr. Kennedy also published a “Dear Colleague” letter earlier this week, directing providers “to expand the use of nonpharmacologic treatments and to strengthen informed consent and shared decision making”. Such directives are a huge tailwind for OMA company Flow Neuroscience. Flow have built an at-home brain stimulation headset for depression which is non-invasive, drug-free, and clinically validated. Earlier this year, the device was approved by the FDA. In a policy environment that is actively questioning the dominance of SSRIs, and encouraging nonpharmacologic interventions, devices like this are likely to see increased adoption. 

On one of my strolls along the cobblestone paths of the Allied Arts Guild I bumped into Chris Appleton. Chris is the founder of SocialRx, a social prescribing platform that connects patients to community-based arts, culture, and nature experiences. The idea is to help people build a sense of connection, belonging and purpose. It’s hard to ignore the importance of these factors in mental healthcare and the outcomes from SocialRx offer strong evidence for their inclusion in our health systems. 79% of SocialRx members improve their overall wellbeing and they’ve seen a 63% reduction in avoidable ED visits. Business is good too. They’re growing 3X YoY with an ARR of  $1.7M and 65% gross margins. 

If policy continues to shift toward whole-person, non-pharmacological approaches, businesses like Flow and SocialRx will continue to benefit.

The third policy inflection is a more discrete one. CMS is moving to include depression screening and follow-up as a quality measure for Medicare Advantage plans. I had a good chat with Ben Gardner, CEO of Vitalic Health about their model and how this policy is supportive of what they’re trying to do. Vitalic is exclusively focused on over sixty-five year olds and they have built an AI screening platform that finds and screens members in this population group. Then, they have geriatric-specialised teams that provide the care to these people. Plans pay for both of these services which is pretty neat — essentially, they’ve turned their acquisition costs into a revenue line. They have great outcomes too — a peer-reviewed study with VNS Health showed a 56% improvement in depression and anxiety scores, a 24% reduction in ED visits, and a 33% reduction in inpatient stays. Again, commercials have followed outcomes — Vitalic are already at $1.7M ARR, with >60% margins and strong quarter on quarter growth. 

When the Merners created the Allied Arts Guild back in 1929, they could barely have imagined the technological innovations that the following century would bring. As I sat in one of the courtyards listening to the trickling of a fountain I couldn’t help but wonder what they would think of today’s world. What would they think about the scale of industrialisation? What would they think about mobile phones and social media? Or more specifically, the apparent lack of humanity used in the crafting of many of these innovations. What would they think about AI?

We all might long for technology development to reflect the kind of thoughtful craftsmanship the Merners championed. But regardless of the intent or process of how technology is created, we cannot deny that it is reshaping our world. In 2026, the strongest technological force is undoubtedly AI. In mental health it has now moved past the point of hype and presents an inflection point for the industry.

The first and obvious application is in conversational AI. Limbic is an OMA graduate that develops Clinical AI which has supported more than seven hundred thousand patients across 63% of the NHS talking therapies in England and thirteen US states. It is the only AI mental health chatbot approved as a Class II medical device and has seven peer-reviewed clinical studies including two in Nature Medicine. As I pointed out in a recent report many conversational AI products are yet to prove their worth. But companies with specific applications and evidence bases like Limbic are taking advantage of a powerful technological inflection.

Presentations from some of the other OMA founders reminded me that conversational AI is only one application of this technology. We often overlook the role it can play in helping us to better understand mental illness and discover and develop new treatments.

Forecast Bio grow human brain tissue in the lab and measure how drugs affect neural circuit activity. They then link those measurements to real-world patient outcomes in the hope of compressing neuropsychiatric drug assessment from years to a single assay. Orbit Neuro is another company applying AI in interesting ways by collecting high-resolution neural data through a novel brain wearable. This helps build the datasets that many other therapeutic discovery models need to work. Eratos are working on similar but different problems, mapping the physical structure of the brain down to the nanoscale relationships between proteins and synapses in actual brain tissue. Most CNS drug discovery has been working with an incomplete picture of what's actually happening in the brain. The more precisely we can see the architecture, the more precisely we can identify what to target. While Eratos’ core competencies are in spatial biology and microscopy, AI is allowing them to do work that would have been impossible only a few years ago.

AI is also being used to personalise treatment. As we know, psychiatric diagnosis is largely symptom-based and treatment is often conducted through a trial-and-error approach — patients cycle through medications before finding one that works. Engram are betting that multimodal biological data, processed at scale, can replace that guesswork with precision. To do this, they are building a foundation model that can subtype psychiatric disease and match patients to treatments. Many providers want to implement more personalised treatment to deliver better outcomes. Anything Engram or others can do to support that, will be warmly welcomed. Monument Therapeutics are also betting on a precision approach, using proprietary digital biomarkers to identify patients with homogeneous underlying neurobiology and match them with targeted compounds. Their lead programme, MT1988, is focused on cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia like memory, attention and decision making for which there are currently no approved treatments.

When all the pitches were done the crowd filed into the exhibition hall next door. Looking around that room, I couldn’t help but be impressed by what One Mind had built with this accelerator. In just four years they’ve created what I’m very comfortable naming the world’s best mental health accelerator. Yes, they’ve brought together the world's top founders. But they’ve also spread their arms wide and welcomed/dragged in the other members of the ecosystem that are needed for real change to happen. They have a lived experience council, a payers council, a provider council and a scientific advisory board. They bring in investors, policy makers and representatives from the non-profit space too. They even recently launched the OMA Catalyst Fund to invest in select companies that complete their accelerator.

In 1929, the Merners started with a sheep farm and created the Allied Arts Guild to provide a supportive environment for artists to craft better objects for the world.

In a way, One Mind have created a guild of their own.

That’s all for this week. Many thanks to the One Mind crew and everyone I spoke to during my visit. If you enjoyed this piece, consider supporting my work by becoming a Hemingway Pro Member and joining our community of mental health innovators.

Keep fighting the good fight!

Steve

Founder of Hemingway

Notes:

[1] Clinically meaningful improvement is defined as 4+ point G-SAS reduction from baseline.

[2] You can learn more about the OMA 2026 cohort here.