Data · Issue 23 · 12 min read

Where mental health VC actually goes.

Eight years of disclosed financing across 1,140 mental-health rounds in the US, UK and Australia. Three charts. One conclusion that the LP letters from the last vintage have not yet had to address.

SD
Steve Duke
Published May 5, 2026 · Data updated through Q1 2026
1,140 rounds $11.4B capital 3 geographies

The narrative says "mental health is having a moment." The disclosed financing data says something more specific: the money is moving — and it is moving away from the names that drove the 2020–2022 vintage.

For the last six months I have been cleaning a dataset of every disclosed mental-health financing round in the US, UK and Australia from 2018 to Q1 2026. PitchBook, Crunchbase, Companies House filings for the UK, ASIC filings for Australia. 1,140 rounds. $11.4 billion of disclosed capital. The picture that emerges is more interesting than the headline.

Below: three charts that together explain where the money is now, where it isn't, and what the next vintage is probably going to learn the hard way.

01
By stage · 2018–2024

The late-stage money disappeared. The early-stage money didn't.

Series C+ funding in digital mental health peaked in 2021 at $2.8 billion and is now running at less than a quarter of that level. Seed and Series A volume has barely moved. That divergence is the entire story of the last three vintages.

  • Series C+ is down 78% from 2021 peak.
  • Seed + Series A volume is +12% over 2019, +3% over 2022.
  • The two curves are now ≈$430M apart. They have never been further.
Figure 1

Capital raised by stage, US + UK + AU

Seed + A B C and later
$0 $750M $1.5B $2.25B $3B 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 Q1'26 2021 peak · $2.8B Seed + A held flat
Source · The Hemingway Report database, derived from PitchBook, Crunchbase, Companies House, ASIC. n = 1,140 disclosed rounds.
02
By geography · Series A median

A Series A in San Francisco is still twice a Series A in London.

The median Series A cheque in mental-health hasn't compressed between geographies since 2018. San Francisco still clears at $11.4M median; London clears at $5.7M; Sydney at $3.9M. The compression you read about in the headline AUM data isn't here.

  • SF medians are 2.0× London and 2.9× Sydney.
  • London's median has actually risen — driven by a few large therapy-tech rounds.
  • Sydney is the smallest pool but the most consistent.
Figure 2

Median Series A cheque size, by geography

2018–20 2021–22 2023–Q1'26
$0 $4M $8M $12M $16M San Francisco London Sydney $11.4M $5.7M $3.9M
Source · The Hemingway Report database. Rounds tagged "Series A" only; medians, not means.
03
By category · 2023–Q1 2026

Diagnostics is up. B2C is gone. Employer keeps quietly compounding.

Among rounds closed since the 2023 reset, the allocation has materially shifted. Diagnostics and biomarker plays now claim 22% of disclosed capital. B2C therapy — the heart of the 2020 vintage — has fallen below 8%. The boring middle is employer-bench-mark contracts, and it is the most consistent line in the dataset.

  • Diagnostics: 4% → 22% in two years.
  • B2C therapy: 31% → 7.8%.
  • Employer-distributed: held at 26–28% across all three vintages.
Figure 3

Disclosed capital by category, 2023–Q1 2026

Share of $3.4B
Employer-distributed 27.5% Payer · state contracts 24.2% Diagnostics & biomarkers 22.0% Therapy infrastructure (B2B) 18.5% B2C therapy 7.8%
Source · The Hemingway Report database. Total disclosed capital in window: $3.4B. Category-of-record set by primary product per company.
Methodology & sources

How this dataset was built

The dataset is reproducible. We will share the cleaned CSV with every Pro subscriber on May 12. Email steve@thehemingwayreport.com with corrections or additions.

We pulled every disclosed financing round tagged as mental health, behavioural health, psychiatry or addiction from PitchBook and Crunchbase for the US (n=824), Companies House for the UK (n=212) and ASIC for Australia (n=104) from 2018-01-01 through 2026-03-31. Rounds were de-duplicated by entity and stage; deals smaller than $250K were excluded.

Category of record was assigned by primary product per company at the time of the round. We re-tagged 86 companies where the public categorisation disagreed with the actual revenue mix. The full re-tagging list is available to Pro subscribers.

  • DatabasePitchBook · Crunchbase · Companies House (UK) · ASIC (AU)
  • Window2018-01-01 → 2026-03-31, inclusive
  • Sample1,140 disclosed rounds · $11.4 billion of capital
  • Re-tagged86 companies (full list in Pro release)